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Chindhi Review: Villa Vandre

Villa Vandre in Bandra is the type of restaurant that transports you back in time, but it’s the kind of mode of transport that everyone in Bombay dreads: the cramped, local train type. Just a fair warning: don’t tie your hair in Villa Vandre because you will be whipping the back of someone else’s neck. Otherwise, get a haircut before you go. I learnt the hard way.

It’s cutesy Parsi vibe leaves you charmed and curious. You expect nothing but a good quality, wholesome, filling, slumber-inducing meal over here. Of course, I only ordered the Parsi chai (Hashtag cheap thrills, anyone?).

I was excited. I’m not much of a tea drinker but this sounded exotic. I also felt like it was my duty to order the Parsi chai, since it would help me connect with my roots (I’m one-fourth Parsi, I’ll have you know, and proud).

When the quaint little teacup arrived I leaned in to look at its contents. Now, I’m no chai expert, but Villa Vandre’s chai had nothing extraordinary about its appearance. I can’t deny, I was slightly disappointed.

I would have smelled it next but I was recovering from a pretty nasty cold so my nose was blocked. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I couldn’t taste anything either. Shit. And here I thought it was the tea’s fault for tasting too much like water.

The only note I took down after taking a few sips was that it tasted a lot like hot water but not but more like water than not. It makes sense now that I couldn’t taste the lemongrass and basil and whatever else it had in it (it was a pretty elaborate concoction).

Damn.

Well, I guess we’ll give Villa Vandre a 10/10 because first impressions aren’t always accurate and maybe what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves.

If you’re going to Villa Vandre any time soon, let me know how the Parsi chai was.

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Chindhi Review: Birdsong Cafe

While those little industrial looking cafes that one often comes across while strolling aimlessly around Bandra (well, maybe not aimlessly; I’m pretty sure every Bandra-goers constant ambition is to come across a small artsy cafe) are always a welcome to-do in our list, our wallets always feel miserably malnourished as soon as we walk in and the soft jazz hits us. We’re appropriately dressed, of course, in flowy clothes, bright shades of lipstick and strong political opinions, but we lack the confidence to sit down and order a food item as well as a drink… each. It’s either/or, and we’re sharing.

Cafe Birdsong is no exception to this. We love sitting by the big windows that overlook the romantic little street, with interesting wall art right across. The charcoal and chalk drawings all over the walls are a good conversation starter (or conversation sustainer, if one of you happens to trail off as both of you lose interest in your current conversation topic, it happens). There’s always light streaming in and the entire environment begs you to unwind, lean back, cross your legs and indulge in a meandering meal. Perhaps order a pasta and eat it bit by bit as the hours tick on, it’s difficult to keep track of it in this dreamy atmosphere. May we recommend the spaghetti Bolognese? It’s supposed to be divine. Of course, that’s only what we’ve heard. We couldn’t afford it.

The cheapest items on the Cafe Birdsong menu were the single espresso at Rs 105 (without tax) and cookies at Rs 85 a piece. Since we were feeling mighty rich that day, we decided to order both.

Unfortunately, neither of us drink coffee. And turns out, a single espresso has no milk or sugar. So we smiled weak smiles of encouragement at each other and cringed through a sip at a time. I’m sure coffee lovers would not be disappointed, it was definitely bitter as coffee is known to be and quite wet, which assured us that it was most definitely a liquid, which is how we’ve often seen it. The mug in which it was served was quite charming.

The cookie was a far better experience. We welcomed the cardboard texture of the chocolate rock. Fortunately, the cookie was so dry and papery that it didn’t get all over your teeth, which makes it qualify as great date food.

The coffee and the cookie together were not a good combination, but they also really worked together. The coffee did not help the cookie but the cookie definitely helped the coffee.

We give the cafe a 10/10 for when you’re broke. The cookie really grows on you and we’re sure that the coffee has a lovely personality.

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“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.” ― Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

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I Cannot Dance Upon My Toes

326 I cannot dance upon my Toes— No Man instructed me— But oftentimes, among my mind, A Glee possesseth me, That had I Ballet knowledge— Would put itself abroad In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe— Or lay a Prima, mad, And though I had no Gown of Gauze— No Ringlet, to my Hair, Nor hopped to Audiences—like Birds, One Claw upon the Air, Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls, Nor rolled on wheels of snow Till I was out of sight, in sound, The House encore me so— Nor any know I know the Art I mention—easy—Here— Nor any Placard boast me— It's full as Opera— 

-Emily Dickinson

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“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the “Star Spangled Banner”, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish”

- Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy)

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It wasn’t so much the birds I was frightened of, it was the weather, the weather here’s on the side of the Japanese. There were thunderstorms all through the mountains, I went through towns I hadn’t been before. The rats are bleeding out of their mouths and ears, which is good, and so were the girls by the side of the road. It was tiring there because everything’s been recruited, there were piles of bodies and if you stopped to find out there was one killed by coffee or one killed by pins, they were killed by heroin, petrol, chainsaws, hairspray, bleach, foxgloves, the smell of smoke was where we were burning the grass that wouldn’t serve. The Bolivians are working with gravity, that’s a secret so as not to spread alarm. But we’re getting further with noise and there’s thousands dead of light in Madagascar. Who’s going to mobilise darkness and silence? that’s what I wondered in the night.

-Joan, Far Away (Caryl Churchill)

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“I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.” 

- Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

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Sky Seasoning

A piece of sky Broke off and fell Through the crack in the ceiling Right into my soup, KERPLOP! I really must state That I usually hate Lentil soup, but I ate Every drop! Delicious delicious (A bit like plaster), But so delicious, goodness sake-- I could have eaten a lentil-soup lake. It's amazing the difference A bit of sky can make.

-Shel Silverstein

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“He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.” ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun)

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The City and I (returning to Bombay after 26 November 2008) This time we didn’t circle each other, the city and I, hackles raised, fur bristling. This time there was space between us and we weren’t competing. Space enough and more for the nose-digging librarian and her stainless steel tiffin box, for the Little Theatre peon to read me endless Marathi poems on rainy afternoons, for the woman on the 7.10 Bhayandar slow with green combs in her hair to say and say again He’s coming to get me He’s coming. This time the city surged towards me, mangy, bruised-eyed, non-vaccinated, suddenly mine.

-Arundhathi Subramaniam

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“Instead of eating, she would stare at her hands for hours on end. She would regard them like a baby, marvelling that they belonged to her. She could move the however she pleased, yet she didn’t know what to do with them, other than crocheting. She had never taken time to stop and think about these things. At her mother’s, what she had to do with her hands was strictly determined, no questions asked. She had to get up, get dressed, get the fire going in the stove, fix breakfast, feed the animals, wash the dishes, make the beds, fix lunch, wash the dishes, iron the clothes, fix dinner, wash the dishes, day after day, year after year. Without pausing for a moment, without wondering if this was what she wanted. Now, seeing her hands no longer at her mother’s command, she didn’t know what to ask them to do, she had never decided for herself before. They could do anything or become anything. They could turn into birds and fly into the air! She would like them to carry her far away, as far as possible.”

- Laura Esquivel (Like Water For Chocolate)

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Circus in Three Rings

In the circus tent of a hurricane

designed by a drunken god my extravagant heart blows up again in a rampage of champagne-colored rain and the fragments whir like a weather vane while the angels all applaud. Daring as death and debonair I invade my lion's den; a rose of jeopardy flames in my hair yet I flourish my whip with a fatal flair defending my perilous wounds with a chair while the gnawings of love begin. Mocking as Mephistopheles, eclipsed by magician's disguise, my demon of doom tilts on a trapeze, winged rabbits revolving about his knees, only to vanish with devilish ease in a smoke that sears my eyes. 

- Sylvia Plath

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“At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.”

- Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)

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“He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)