Category Archives: Anglo-Indian

Kula Shaker – Camden Roundhouse, London 17.02.2016

FINALLY!!!!  After 20 years, I’ve finally seen Kula Shaker live!

As a wannabe musician, I absolutely envied Kula Shaker’s unique fusion of Indian culture and psychedelic rock during the Brit Pop era of the 90’s; it was inevitable and somewhat cliché that I identified with the Hari Krishna public schoolboy converts on a major scale during my Joe Daki self-discovery teenage years for obvious reasons. 

I never got to see them in their hayday because I was so often in the States when they toured; so I knew it was probably my last opportunity to see them play live following the recent release of their new album, K2.0, which conveniently coincides with the 20th anniversary of their debute album K.

K2.0 is a fitting successor to K and I thought the band sounded fucking excellent tonight as they belted out tune after tune with great energy and flawless performing. 

The sight of Camden Roundhouse, packed to the rafters with Caucasians ‘singing’ along to the song Govinda in Hindi gibberish will remain with me until I forget it completely; in fact it made me think of Mark and Lard’s cover of Tattva back when BBC radio 1 was entertaining.

Bindi bhaji poppadom tala!!!

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Behtareen – Indian Street Food – East Croydon

Behtareen is a funky new Indian-style cafe in Dingwall Road which is just down from East Croydon train station.

Scottish referendum

At the risk of sounding Tolkienesque, you will find Behtareen next door to Zabardast!  The observant souls amongst you will probably notice that the cafe and Indian sandwich shop are both owned by the same people!

Simply put, there are times where I **NEED** curry and have become something of a regular to Zabardast since it opened in 2014 (fueling my Seekh kebab roll addiction on a Friday!).

Therefore, I was overjoyed when Bethareen sprang up because Croydon has been lacking a decent Indian cafe since ‘Spice Cafe’ left Surrey Street many moons ago.

Inside, the cafe’s decor is visibly very bright and clean with park/pub bench style tables; if you look around, you’ll also notice a load of Indian ‘stuff’ in frames up on the walls.

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I’ve only used the very swift take-away option so far (they conveniently have a card machine for payment!), but I took the time to observe the friendly table service whilst I waited for my food and have vowed to sit in there in the near future.

So far, I’ve tried the lamb biriyani, tandoori paneer and paratha; all of which were very tasty and reasonably priced!!!

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Anyway, give it a whirl sometime!   Antikrish recommends!

Here’s the menu! behtareen menu

No more than two children in a shop!

My local Pakistani shop has a ‘no more than 2 children in the shop at one time!’ sign up on the front door.

There could be 10 school children packed into the10ftx10ft shop and they would STILL be able to see a kid try and lift a Twix!

What with all the CCTV, thermographic sensors and airport grade x-ray scanning technology! 

Oh, and Great Uncle Mohammad who does his best to inconspicuously watch you whilst he pretends to price tag the sweetcorn.

Even Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible) couldn’t nick off the Khan family!

Ravish Sitar Pedal – Electro Harmonix

The tech boys over at Electro Harmonix are gods, for they have produced the holy grail of guitar effect pedals; The Ravish Sitar Pedal.

I was lucky enough to cut my teeth on a few original Electro Harmonix pedals when Alex purchased a few back in the nineties, the Big Muff (fuzz), Polyphase (phaser) and Electric Mistress (flange) were used on a couple of our tracks, ‘The Otherside’ and ‘You Stink’ immediately spring to mind!

I stumbled upon the Ravish Sitar pedal by accident whilst searching the net for an idea that I had for a song; having watched the youtube promo video, I went out and bought myself one along with my own Big Muff whilst out in the States!

For those unfamiliar with the brand or for those of you who are are just starting out to experiement with your guitar sound; I’d really recommend Electro Harmonix pedals because they are the absolute puppies privates when it comes to guitar FX pedals.  They are without a doubt the best made products on the market and are highly customisable to get unique and brilliant variations in sound.

The Ravish Sitar pedal is incredible in what it delivers, you can tweak and set up your sound by Key, delay, modulation.  You can also fiddle with several knobs (technical term!) to adjust the sympathetic settings, lead and delay; all of which can give you very different results indeed!

I got mine out the box, played around with the settings for about 30 minutes with the guitar tuned to C Major and this is the result I got!  As you can see, anyone can sound like a shit Ravi Shankar now!  So go out and buy one immediately!  Antikrish commands it!

Happy Birthday Mum (65 years young!) and Happy Diwali 2011!

Happy Diwali all, hope you have a very prosperous New Year!

Was rather nice coming in today for my first day back and receive some texts from Desi friends wishing me a Happy Diwali; I’d totally forgotten!!! It seems rather fitting that my family are going out this evening for a curry (at my favourite buffet) to celebrate my Mum’s 65th Birthday.

I have a special link with Mum’s birthday because it’s the first day that she held me (back in 1977!) because I was rather poorly when I was born!

So, onion bhaji’s all round!

Mum doing her impression of ‘Granddad’ from Only Fools and Horses.

Dine Tandoori – Indian buffet in Wallington

As I write this entry, the skies have opened and we’re having a ‘traditional’ English summer. What better way to spend a Sunday then partaking in an over-indulgent session down ones local Indian buffet?

I’ve been dieting for the last 4 weeks, cereal for breakfast, soup for lunch and fish finger or chicken filled English muffins for dinner along with various salad and fruit bits. So today represented the first ‘proper’ meal that I’ve had in over a month. Time for a treat! It was great because I’d won £50 on the Premium Bonds again this month, and decided to take my Mum and Joanie (my godmother) out for lunch.

Dine Tandoori is very local to me, and was previously known as Mehfil before it came under new management recently. I noticed that there was a buffet on offer when walking Chico up the park, and thought that I should give it a whirl! The restaurant was actually a bank when I was a kid, and they’ve really used the space nicely inside which gives a very simple but sumptuous ‘feel’ to the place.

HAND PAINTED MURAL
My favourite feature inside is a hand painted mural of a waterfall on the wall behind the buffet dishes; I had to take a picture as thought was particularly striking. Apparently a local Indian artist had done it; I thought it made a lovely change to the usual generic pictures of the Taj Mahal?

THE BUFFET
The buffet costs £7.95 per person, and you can choose from 21 different dishes which I thought was great value. Highlights for me would have to be the Lamb Jalfrezi and the Chana (chick peas) dish which was exceptionally tasty.

SERVICE
Was very friendly, simple and welcoming.

VERDICT
I thought the food was exceptionally nice, fresh, tasty and fantastic value for the price.

9 out 10 for me, would have been 10 out 10 but they hadn’t acquired their alcohol license yet; so sadly no Kingfisher for me!

Pukka.

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Festival of lights!

‘Ow do!?!

Just wanted to wish all my fellow Joe Daki’s out there a funky time tonight for the annual festival of lights; I will never know how you lot were able to steal Guy Fawkes night away from the honkies.  Bravo!

I do love a good Diwali; although given the option I much prefer a nice hot Madras!

Happy Diwali!

Indian call centres and International calling cards

Andre Arshavin keeps harrassing me whilst I’m out on my lunchbreak; well, a Russian chap giving out International calling card leaflets rather than Arsenal’s cheeky forward; but he looks just like him!!!

It’s a futile exercise these days; trying to tempt me with cheap overseas calling rates, purely because I no longer have a penchant for Yank bints………..shame the cards weren’t around 13 years ago when phoning America twice a day almost cost me a Kidney!

Furthermore, If I want to speak to an Indian relative I just phone Virgin Media after 8pm and it only costs 1p a minute. Why are employees in Indian call centres given ‘English’ names?!?? For our convenience? It’s offensive!!!

So far I’ve spoken to a ‘Peter’, a ‘Rupert’ and even a ‘Robert’ but no ‘Kevin’. Maybe it’s not a popular pseudonym in Mumbai yet???

Kirpans and broomsticks

I got asked today what my opinion was regarding a quote taken from Sir Mota Singh QC.

Sir Singh, a Sikh high judge, feels that children of the Sikh faith should be allowed to take a Kirpan (religious dagger) into schools or public places without fear of arrest.

My first thought was not about the holy dagger situation, but that I realised I’d become something of a ‘we’ll ask Kev because he’s half darkie and it won’t be racist’ soundboard; especially in Indian matters.

To be honest; It just seems rather stupid?

However, for the sake of discussion I pondered the issue a little more and began to consider the argument ‘against’ more than ‘for’.

The Constitution of the United States of America gives Americans the right to carry firearms; by the same standards, surely Sir Singh would allow Billy Bob Triggerfinger to carry his six shooter around London Zoo?

What about Jim McTight of the clan Mcdonald; should he be allowed to browse the paint section of B&Q whilst carrying a dirk to complete his traditional attire of kilt and sporran?

As with most things, I googled it. It turns out that many Sikhs do not carry the Kirpan in India; those that do are certainly not allowed them onto planes.

Bearing that in mind; is Sir Singh just being a bit of an awkward sod?

Possibly….

I distinctly remember an occasion where a Sikh man was openly running down a street in Southall (London) brandishing a sword and chasing a Muslim. Made the local news and everything it did!

Religious sabre rattling always makes me nervous, purely because it evokes the immortal words from George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ in my head.

“Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”.