Being vegetarian in singapore

Chaat - Khansama at Science Park Drive serves up some excellent chaats with fresh ingredients and fresh sweet curd, and lovely sweet and spicy mint and tamarind chutneys.


Roti Prata - Mr.Prata at Clementi Ave, Block 320, just outside Clementi MRT dishes out light, crisp non-oily prata's. These are neither roti's nor parathas, the way we know it in need. Roti Prata is thin layers of dough spread one on top of the other and fried and heated on a hot plate - a unique Singapore creation, evolved from a Malaysian version. It comes loaded either with butter or cheese or mushroom or the way u like it, with an accompaniment of a spicy curry.

Mr.Prata is also the place to go to if you are craving for a good home-cooked South Indian meal, interestinng sambar. A good place for a cheap meal, money-wise.


Burgers - Burger King, McDonalds and KFC have no veg burger in Singapore. Burger King agrees to give you their regular burger without the meat patty, with the onion tomato and lettuce, but refuses to either reduce the price or susbtitute the patty with mushrooms. Carl's Jr. does substitute the patty with mushrooms but at an extra cost. McDonalds in India has a variety of veg burgers. I wonder why they ignore the huge Indian vegetarian tourist population in Singapore, that relates to McDonalds as the only familiar food chain from back home.


The only chain that has a veg burger with a veg patty is Mos Burger, called the Croquette Burger, which is the euqivalent of an Aloo Tikki Burger in India. Not bad for fast food. They also have an better spread of drinks, apart from the colas.


If you dont mind shelling out those extra bucks for a good veg burger, then the Melting Pot Cafe at the Holiday Inn Atrium serves a lovely veg burger. Also, the veg strudel is worth paying for, a delicious mix of bell peppers, zuchini, eggplant and dips. Lovely!


Sandwiches - Vegetarain sandwiches at O'Brien's are just ok. Nothing much to talk about. Just sliced veggies in bread. Not worth the price.


Pasta - Pastamania may not exactly be fine dining, but I have had some of the best pastas ever, there. Good spread of vegetarian pastas. I especially like the ones with the thick tomato base. They also serve a fine minestrone soup.


Lunch / Dinner - The only pure vegetarian restaurant I have visited in Singapore is Original Sin at Chip Bee Garden, Holland Village. Every dish I have had there has been impeccable. May not be the place for lovers of Indian masala, who need to flood every dish with salt and pepper. These are lightly spiced, healthy meals with loads of vegetables. The Moussaka which is a cake of layers of cheese, whole lentils, cheese, eggplant. The Absolut pasta comes with an infusion of Absolut vodka, and the Tiramisu is just heavenly. Refreshing Mediterannean healthy recipies. Beautiful ambience. Rates are fine dining.

Kinara North West Frontier at Boat Quay your regular dhaba roti-sabzi. I had a crisp garlic naan with mushroom masala and a very watery jaljeera. Regular north-Indian fare. I would say Kinara at Holland Village has better quality, and tastier gravies than the Boat Quay outlet.

Thai Express has always been a delightful experience. The yellow and green veg curries are made with freshly grated thick coconut milk. This is the perfect meal for the Indian who lovws his spice.

Crystal Jade la Mian Xiao Long Bao - Yes, this Chinese cuisine chain, has a good enough spread of vegetarian dishes, and you can actually order vegetarian here without shrimps or even eggs. I had an absolutely light non-oily Fried Rice with a sprinkling cripy fried honeyed peanuts along with a side dish of sauteed Kai Lan. Mixed with the roasted chillies sauce and the vinegar, this meal actually tasted good and reminded me of the chinese we eat at roadside stalls in India. But thats just the sauces. The food is light, non-oily, non-spicy and goooood. The iced lemon honey and watercress honey were perfect. I spent $15 per person.

Pizzas - Modestos at Vivocity, Level 1, has the thinnest crispiest pizza base, with a generous sprinkling of vegetables and olive oil. Light, non-oily, not overtly-cheesy, non-spicy, fluffy pizzas. Nicccccccce :)

Pakistan and Me

Terrorists raid a police training centre in Lahore. Rescue operations have been on for the past 5 hours. Well i guess at such a time most Indians would say serves them right. I wonder what the average Paki goes thru. The average citizen who lives the class-struggle and slogs to get two meals a day. Keeps waging a war against corrupt politicians and beuraucrats constantly. Suffers a military coup every 4-5 years, in a country where political assasinations is business as usual. Hopes for a liberal, unbiased education for his kids. Craves for a better media, with more freedom of speech. Fears further confinement of its women. Dreads another bombing in the neighbourhood. Is he really any different from the average Bihari in Mumbai dreading the onslaught of the Sena? Are his problems really any different from mine? Does he really deserve this?

How I became Charlie

Life has been all about learning new names and trying to decipher them, starting with mine, Charlotte. Now, that simply read in school to first graders, sounded like char-lotte. Though my parents kept addressing me as shalu, it was only after 5-6 years of existence on this planet that i realised that shalu was a pet name, the actual name was Charlotte. There started the dual identity - Shalu in the neighbourhood and Charlotte in school.
Growing up in the lower middle class society of Sakinanka in Bombay, Charlotte was the most disastrous possessions I could have ever had. But then, life introduced me to names more weird than mine. The chawl I lived in, Pansare Sadan was made up of 25-30 families. My neighbours came from all varied races, religions, castes, and regions in India. I was surrounded on all 4 sides by 4 Maharashtrian families. To my right were the Patade's from the ghats, the hilly regions of the Sahyadris, and to my left were the Patare's from the coastal region of Malwan. I spent the first few years of my life trying to figure out the difference between Patade, Patare and oh yes Pansare - to me they were tongue twisters, and sounded the same. Then there was this family called Lokhande (Lokhand? Iron????). Besides there were also other Maharashtrians, belonging to different communities, Malwas, Kshatriya's, etc.
Diagonally opposite my house, were two Keralite families, the Kutty's with fair skin and the Sukumaran's with darker skins, again from different regions of Kerala. Much later in life I learnt that those were just misnomers and not their real family names. Those days in Bombay, all south Indians were referred to as Madrasis :)
A little ahead of my house was a Tamilian family with the family name Singh. Now this puzzled me no end, coz according to me Singh's should have been Punjabi's. Then there was the Kannada Poojari family and the Marwari Shah family, who named their store, Patel Medical store. Why would you do that, isn't Patel a Gujarati name. I lived a better portion of my life on this planet, believing that Marwari's and Gujaratis were one.
And then there was this Marathi family who were traders of different varieties of Tea. I still, can't remember their family name, they were always referred to as Kisan Tea. And then there was the Mali family, and I wondered why they were Mali? Did they live up on the Mala (loft in Marathi)?
I was a Fernandes. Now that was quite western and exotic, in this kind of an environment. Though living with a name like "Charlotte" is still quite an effort sometimes.
Living in a microcosm of different cultures, made me feel one with them. I was at home at Pansare Sadan, while the other chawls around were alien to me. But when I went to school my friends came from different chawls, so then I belonged to St.Anthony's against other schools in the neighbourhood. And then when inter-school sports drove us against neighbouring areas, Sakinaka was so much better than Chandivali or Safed Pool.
School was a mob of names lashed at me. The immediate bonding was with Catholic friends from the same religion, Bonet, Joy, Zeena, Rina, Daphne. And then there were Catholic friends with Hindu names, now that was another puzzle - Sachin, Roshan, Savita. Why, I thought Christians only had western, English names for their kids. School taught me that was not the case.
The front-runners in my class were Simmi and Sheeba - Oh My God. Have mercy, I'm only 6. How am i supposed to remember names so similar. Merlyn had a nice ring to it, while Samina took some time to learn. Dipti used to talk a lot, while Monica was timid.
Being the tallest in class, secondary school was about being a back-bencher, and that was when I was introduced to the notorious Lords of the Last Benches (LOLB) Vinod and Praveen were easy to remember, but why couldn't Nazmul and Shamshul simplify their names??????????
Going to school with all these names, melted my religion and my regionality away. I was no longer a Mangalorean Catholic, I belonged to St.Anthony's Sakinaka. That was my third identity. If school was all about being lower-middle class, college was a microcosm of different classes too. And then being a Sindhi college, I got introduced to a new community - the Sindhi's. So a whole new gamut of family names - Totlani, Kukreja, Gopalani, and the Parsees, the Daruwallas and the Batliwallas, and of course my Bohri Muslim friend, Rampurwalla, my Nepali friend Bogati, to name a few. College made me leave Sakinaka behind. I now belonged to Tolani college Andheri. And was always proud of the fact, that it was the only college those days that concentrated more on academics, than anything else. That was my fourth identity.
As life progressed, i crossed boundaries, from my chawl, outside Sakinaka, and then outside Andheri. Identities seemed to keep adding on, as my boundaries kept widening. Different jobs took me outside Andheri into the rest of Bombay. Chaat at Juhu / Chowpatty, coffee at Reclamation, movies at Eros, walks on Marine Drive, brought me closer and closer to my muse, Bombay. All other identities apart, now I was only and purely a Mumbaikar (Bombayiite preferably, coz it was Bombay that i was born in).
No, I was not Marathi, but I topped Marathi in school, amongst Marathi students. Yes I was a Mangalorean, but I knew the chawls and gullies of Bombay better than any other region in the country. Yes, I was Catholic, but I knew the rituals of Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali and Sankranti, better than any other Hindu in school. Yes, I was taught the Bible, but ask me about Ramayana, Mahabharata, Gnyaneshwar, Sopan, Ramdev or Tukaram, and I will be able to tell you a tale or two more than the average Hindu. What is it that makes me different from the Hindu then?
I started traveling out of the state, Himachal, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and my affinity towards the nation grew stronger. I was no longer Catholic, no longer a Mangalorean, not even a Bombayiite. How could I be, when people in these states welcomed me like family, made me feel at home, and were no different from me. They had the same issues, the same views, financial, psychological, political, as mine. Marathi, Gujarati, Bihari, Tamilian, or Malayalee, they all seemed to be the same - two hands, two legs, red blood. Wherever I went the colour of the skin changed, but the colour of blood seemed to remain the same.
And there was Bollywood, how could I stay away from its charms. Bollywood made me a fiercer Indian than I ever was. Being an Indian meant sticking to your roots, not gunning for the United States of America, and hating Pakistan for devouring Kashmir.
While the Rath Yatra, changed everything in India, 9/11 changed everything around the world. The BJP, the Bajrang Dal, the RSS, kept playing divide and rule and pushed the minorities towards drastic measures and into terrorism, while Bush played God and pushed Islamist nations further into fundamentalism.
I moved on from Bombay to Bangalore, from Bangalore to Singapore, and to newer identities. I realised people were no different in Singapore. The middle-class here was exactly the same as the middle class in India, warm welcoming, family-oriented. They had the same problems and the same sense of humour. Singapore is made up of Chinese and Malays. They follow different customs and rituals, but how they are different from me, I cannot see. The colour of the skin changes, but the colour of the blood remains the same. Women have the same worries about fair skin, and slimming, and finding a rich husband, to name a few and men worry about finding good paying jobs and having a good career, that pays for a house, a car and a barbecue.
Does it strengthen my Indian identity, I do not see any reason why it should. I live in a strange land with strange people, I long to have friends, I long to be accepted. Does that mean I do not want to be Indian anymore. No, it means I want to stop being something or somebody.
Pakistan is in dire straits, ousted lawyers who helped in electing a president, are now out to get him. Terrorism seems to be the order of the day. Women are still supressed, and people still starve. The Taliban they created against Afghani forces, is the very Taliban that proves to be fatal. But I am an Indian, should I be delighting in the fall of Pakistan, should I say they deserve it, for the terror they inflict upon India. Should I pride myself on how I belong to a much better, and democratic nation. If this is what being Indian does, then I'm ashamed of that pride. Are they not as human as me? How different are their women when it comes to fighting the moral police? How different are their mountain -dwellers when it comes to surviving? How different are their parents, who worry about a fair and liberal education for their kids? How different are their politicians when it comes to corruption? Then what is it that makes me different from them, that makes me scoff at them and find pleasure in their doom. Is this what being Indian means, delighting at another's pain. Then I would rather not be a Bombayiite, I would rather not be a mangalorean, I would rather not be Catholic, I would rather not be an Indian or a Singaporean.
Every identity of mine has only categorised me. Every identity of mine has only pitted me against others, has only put me in a slot and separated me from others. People who belong to different communities, different regions, different religions, different nationalities. If belonging to something means being separate from others, then I would rather not belong. If being human means the extinction of other species from the face of the planet, then I would rather not be human either. in a world troubled with global warming, am I going to suffer any lesser than a Tibetan or lesser than a Tiger? What is my identity?
If it separates me from you, then I would rather not have one.

An ideal society ?

Two cops are suspended in Etawah, UP for ruthlessly beating up a little girl, as shown in a video clip by the Indian media. http://www.in.com/news/readnews-current-affairs-cops-beat-up-a-5yearold-girl-in-etawah-835ccf457b43ce0cee50b61b0b43c754127f8abd-53504-true.html It is not for the first time that this has happened. In fact, I would say that this is no different from the way the Indian parent beats up his kid for not "behaving". This was probably the first time it was caught on camera. So, I would say that the cop was only behaving in a manner that was expected of him, from the society that hands over a six year old to him for thieving. What kind of a society, I ask, has 6-year olds thieving around instead of going to school? What kind of society makes a six year old desperate enough to steal? What kind of a society, instead of providing for its children, hands them over to the cops when they falter? And why should I bother about society, I dont live in an uneducated, impoverished Etawah? No, I do not, but that is where my driver, my maid, my plumber, my watchman, my sabziwallah and dudhwallah come from.

Oh no, I would not take this opportunity, to blame the uneducated politicians of UP, or the corrupt bureaucracy. It is the common man, you and me, who does not bother about the state of our future citizens. It is easier to blame the authorities. But what have we done to ensure that our kids get a decent education, to ensure that they get two meals a day, to ensure that they are clothed and sheltered. Instead, we are ever-ready to teach these six-year old miscreants a lesson. Arent we experts at doing that, turning a blind eye to the urchins banging at our car windows at the red signal?

Oh, but what can I do? I'm so helpless. We Indians, are experts at technology, we are experts at strategy, we are experts at multi-tasking, diplomacy, working in stressful conditions, and even ass-licking. We just feel so helpless when we see a six year old being beaten up on camera.

Chingay Parade 2009

The Chingay Parade 2009 set afloat with an array of floats and performers from all over South East Asia and the Far East. Students from polytechnic institutes in Singapore, viz. Nanyang, Republic, Ngee Ann, and others put up a colourful display of brightly lit up pyrotechnic floats adorned with acrobats performing their acts. Performers from all over the region masqueraded the streets with their vibrant art and culture. Tourists and locals thronged the streets with their family and kids, trying to catch a glimpse of the masked capers.

I ran from pillar to post trying to grab the best spot I could to catch the performances. But I must say, that this was something i would never do, if i was by myself back home. Inspite of the rush to get the best spot, not once was I ever pushed or jostled by the crowds. Mobs lined the streets from City Hall to Raffles Avenue, but not one person even acidentally brushed past. Back home, we have no concept of space. For the first time I realise my sense of space and how I can respect it. Singapore does teach me basic courtesy, and I wonder where it comes from. I return home late in the night after the parade, and I feel pretty safe in this city. Not one
person staring at me as if I had committed a crime by staying out late. In fact, I love being taken for as a person, as an individual and not as a woman. The happy-go-lucky Singaporean couldnt care less about your colour, your race, your nationality or your social status.
Anyways, the fireworks were beautiful, and the street party after the parade the most happening ever. The recession-affected streets of Singapore were filled with life and joy, and not for a moment did I feel lonely in this vibrant melting pot.

It was a last minute decision for me to land up at the parade and hence these pictures from my Nokia 6233.