Tel Aviv

Israel has always been very exciting, part because I'd read Dominique Lapierre's O Jerusalem, of which I recalled none, a little because a rich Israeli businessman is dating some hollywood actress ( I've forgotten both names) and because of its unique position in both social sciences ie history and geography.

Readers will notice that i explain my puns - like the above. i could've very well stopped at social sciences but i continued. i call it being user friendly.

Coming back to Israel or rather to the athens airport, where in a fit of madness i bought a 19 euro pen and then tried killing myself by thinking so much that i missed a few heartbeats.

Many pangs of guilt later, i decided to forgo lunch for 3 days. I'm an awful seeker of value, who commits, regrets and tries to create balance by eating flight food to save on restaurant bills.

Anyhow the flight was uneventful and long before i could finish a few winks, we reached ben gurion airport. Incidentally, ben gurion's name is the only one i remember from the above mentioned book.

The airport is fairly well designed and I was at immigration sooner than you can say a long name. With extensive travels into bangladesh, indonesia, yemen, syria, UAE, and sworn enemy lebanon, i wasn't expecting a hearty welcome. and i didn't get it either. waited for an hour and after giving names of my family, pet giraffe, assorted planets of the andromeda galaxy and all but one of the fourteen moons of navu1287 i was asked to leave. in the direction of tel aviv.

This process was repeated twice more, before i could get into a cab for the hotel
a new day was breaking and so was my back.

As i enter the hotel, i meet noel from pondicherry, avid fan of himesh. i was made to travel 11 hours and here Israel was right next to ulhasnagar and jignesh and hitesh shah were doubling as mossad agents.

But the mediterranean was the real deal and himesh was singing on zee hot. a new channel which has since made sure that indian men will never get firang dates.
rushed to my room leaving noel with his tanhai and himesh.

my host was an iraqi jew, who took me to meet an israeli arab. later i also met a palestenian christian. i'd like to say something meaningful with a flavor of funny at this stage. but since i can't think of anything, suggestions are welcome. the winning entry gets noel's collection of zee hot recordings

That was the beginning of the end of a long night.

Then some travel to haifa and meeting before a well earned lunch at a restaurant where 23 people had perished in a suicide bomb attack. thankfully this piece of information was served with the main course, so i had to be satisfied with the entree.

My impression till now were all positive. Israelis have a good sense of humor, nice buildings, broad roads, eat good food and speak english - clearly business was going to be tough.

In my line of business, I've realized that a failure in all or substantial number of above is important for a country to have prospects.

Yemen, where we flourish, has bad food, which is served on a newspaper placed on the table, speak no english, the only buliding of consequence - the american embassy was recently bombed, and whenever they want to have a laugh, they shoot someone. unka sense aur jo mara woh non sense. (their sense is to non sense other peoples)

ergo, i rest my case.

now we come to israeli men and women. the promised land invites people from across the world, makes them do 3 years of army life and serves salads for breakfast. this gives israelis, fit bodies and good digestion. also mixing of nations has led to some exotic colors and races which can make a man very happy for being a jew in the holy land. since i was neither, i did the next best thing - hog on falafel and pomegranate juice.

i read somewhere that more israelis have been killed in road accidents than in all the wars put together. soon after reading this i found myself becoming a statistic when my hosts' employee - an american jew drove me to their office. i missed the obituaries for another day, but learnt an important lesson.

after 3 days of half kilo salads in morning, meat for lunch and falafel for dinner, i had a day off when i decided to go to Jerusalem. first stop was yad vashem which commemorates the holocaust victim. It was moving and is a must visit. i'd to pull myself to make it to the bus.

some minor churches and then at the chamber of "Last Supper". Clealry this wasn't the place. I couldn't see the kitchen and takeaways were a little distance away. the guide agreed and mentioned that falafel doesn't taste good in delivery menus.

After agreeing to disagree with historians we moved to the jesus's tomb. i'm not very comfortable near tombs so after making some guttural sounds resembling my discomfort with being near tombs i excused myself.

Travelled thru' the old quarters of jerusalem thru' the via dolorosa, the pathway Jesus is supposed to have walked while carrying the christ. pretty amazing. then the wailing wall.

that was that, and since it was a bright sunny day i came back with a mightly size migraine.
late evening was dinner with my hosts and their friends and another business partner and their wives. they took me to nazareth and served the most amazing food i've had in all trip and definitely one of the better one in my life. there was lots of tahini - different types with zucchini, humus, cucumbers, roasted bell peppers and loads of cheese, feta and non feta. and hazaar other things. the meat - ground lamb on cinnamon sticks. If someone ever asks me for my last meal, it’ll be homemade dal and rice. With some mango pickle, lizzat papad and dahi with coarse ground black pepper. But if I live to order dinner, I’ll have the lamb on cinnamon stick.. I’d also like to have the fried red mullet or the sultan Ibrahim from the eponymous restaurant in Beirut as the earlier course.

I was deposited at the airport on way back from the dinner at 230 in the morning. the securitry cleared me quickly and i was in the flight at 530, not having slept since the previous night. small stopover at frankfurt and then at munich and then zagreb and a car ride to a city called rijeka. that was a day which had lasted almost 36 hours before i hit the bed. But much happened and that I relate in the next post.