Most Indians never encounter Latin words or phrases as part of their formal education. But if you went to Bishop Cottons in Bangalore you will inevitably come to learn and hate the phrase "Nec Dextrorsum Nec Sinistrorsum." Latin for "neither to the left, nor to the right," it is the school's motto, recited by Draconian school administrators and unctuous school prefects.

For wayward monkeys like me with a preternatural anti-establisment streak and a history of insubordination issues, this phrase stood for everything oppressive, confining and soul-crushing about Indian education.

Nec Dextrorsum, Nec Sinistrorsum - the proverbial Procrustean bed. Too far to the left and you will be get one nice thappad on your head. Too far to the right, six lashes on your bum. On straight on like a bakra and everything will be just right.

The undisputed guru of Chemistry in St. Joseph's whose notes every class 10 student of ICSE has referred to.

Bangalore City, Southern India, has an obsession with power - perhaps due to the erratic availability of it. As paradox would dictate, many of the metropolis' precincts are embellished with the omnipresent power-grid - a clunky, looming, phallic-pyramidal structure, ostensibly put in place, to relay electrical impulses from building to building. Also known as "transformer", this miniature Eiffel Tower-like structure, can easily transform your home from an illuminated domicile, into the dark ages. Long-accustomed to this common phenomenon, I now eagerly anticipate it, as such murkiness presents the perfect alibi for me to grope buxom home-visitors, or assist my wife in enhancing my lineage. From the perspective of India's alleged male-dominated society, the "power-grid" is something that women need to scale. And many are doing so, by embarking on securing the country's most desirable diploma - that of an electrical engineer. The fact that sparks hardly fly between men and women in this country, but mainly from malfunctioning power-grids, is... shocking. Simply shocking. And anyway, if the sexes decided to go "around" together, it will surely be a short-circuit! It follows, that I know only one kind of "load-shedding" - getting my big mama off my bruised, blighted and burdened, back!

There is no other park in Bangalore which better captures the ethos of local college boys (especially those who nurture a proclivity for cracking their jokes and schemes over the reefer leaf). This one-acre composite expanse of children's play-area, nursery, walking path, sacred mini Nandi-bull mount and general verdure, was initially christened Mango Dell Park, after the type of trees grown here and the colonial British planter who facilitated such. But perhaps the fact the Park runs over a matured sewer, ensures that the "grass" is always greener here, and so the vast variety of varsity pot-puffers who claimed this land as their own, retitled it Ganja Park. It is a name that endures into legend, despite the valiant attempt of Puravankara and Co at trying to revamp the space and smother their name across its peripheral walls. As a distinguished resident of a flat overlooking the Park, I eternally have my head in the clouds... of Marijuana smoke.

In the '80s, this was THE place to be in Bangalore if you were an eng bai who liked playing dishoom dishoom video games and did not own an Atari or Commodore. Located in front of the original Corner House on Residency Road, Niki's Parlour had all the original arcade games where you could spend many paisas playing Space Invaders, Frogger, Pac Man, Missile Command, ekcetera, and then go to Corner House for a hot fudge chocolate sundae. Bindaas!

OP's or the Only Place used to be located at the foot of Brigade Road in the same courtyard that housed a grave stone manufacturing company and an auto repair garage, across from Opera Theatre. Known equally for their fine steaks and pies as well as for playing Foreigner (Waiting For a Girl Like You) on an endless loop, OP's was a hep spot for dates, business dinners and families alike.

If Harold & Kumar were porkis living in Bangalore this would be their White Castle (if you are unfamiliar with Amreeka, this is a place where you go for something to eat on late/drunken/stoned nights, that you will shoorly regret the next morning). Fanoos is a favorite hangout/timepass spot in Johnson Market for hungry late night revelers who don't question what they are eating. In the absence of a Health & Sanitation Department that govern restaurant cleanliness, rumors run rampant about stray dogs going missing and cooks kneading mystery meat with their dirty feet but the end product is like manna from heaven. Eat a jumbo(2x) or a Rambo(4x) shish kabab roll washed down by a Thums Up and be on your way. Never mind that the next morning you're on the throne begging for mercy and some Eno.

A reaction to something amazing, Rajni level matter (just imagine!!), astounding

Paunch.

The size is of importance. It has to be a distended-to-point-of-belly-button-distortion paunch.

Picture a person who has been belting rice and ghee since ye high, and has off-late been slyly polishing off some military mess unmentionable type NV. You know, Chicken 65, cow, bull, goat, lamb, type items, (along with some Old Monk on the side)? That person's obscene protrusion in the stomach area.

to drink