These are the winners, in random order, since they all won it on their own steam, as it were, not against each other:

Zenzi. Bandra

Vong Wong, Nariman Point

Gajalee, Vile Parle

Samovar, Kala Ghoda

Mahesh Lunch Home, Fort

Moshe's, Cuffe Parade

Rama Nayak Shree Krishna Lunch Home, Matunga

Frangipani. Trident

Dum Pukht, Grand Maratha

Oh Calcutta!, Tardeo

Golden Star Thali, Charni Road

Swati Snacks, Tardeo

Stax. Hyatt Regency

Thai Pavilion, Taj President

Indigo Deli, Colaba

Zaffran, Crawford Market

Jaffer Bhai's, Grant Road

We are the world, and like the whole world, I too have memories of Michael Jackson.

Beat it, I was a fan. I must admit, I was not crazy about Him, but I loved Him, when he was that young fella.

For me, he will always be that same young, hip guy, who moved his legs like I will only be able to do so involuntarily when very old.

When He came to Mumbai, I resisted the temptation of calling up Wizcraft's Sabbas Joseph, who organised the show, for a pass. I preferred to read everything about Him. I edited copy about Him. I saw photographs of Him in Mumbai. But I did not go to see Him in flesh.

Months later, when I went to meet my wife for the first time, when she was not yet my wife, I was surprised to find a huge laminated poster, of a very young Jackson posing with a tiger, at her house.

Dear Reader,

What follows is a diary entry I wrote in July last year, a few days after I came to Bombay. I was too scared to publish this then!

I am still scared but I guess haven't shown you my face for so long that my sense of shame overrides my fear. Now, if I am dead or kidnapped tomorrow, please let them know I did this for you (and for me).

--

July 8, 2008

Last night Raj Thackeray came in my dream. I hadn't invited him (with fervent prayers and messages in empty bottles) but now that I have relocated to Mumbai I don't think he needs my invitation anymore.

When Brett, my Aussie acquaintance in Hong Kong, learnt that I was travelling to Australia, he gave me a mission to accomplish: to have a 'kangaroo burger' on his behalf!Since in any case I'm partial to exotic epicurean delights - I've had, among other things, moose meat in Sweden, duck's tongue in China and ostrich in Hong Kong - I told him I'd be happy to oblige. But such was the rush of work in the first few days that I didn't have the time for anything more than a bite on the go.

In Sydney, last Wednesday night, however, my luck changed.

Trudging back from an interview with an Aussie sociologist, I was contemplating another rushed bite before heading to my hotel room to work. But since for the first time in days I had the luxury of time, and since Australian multiculturalism - the subject of my interview - extends to the range of international cuisines on offer, and since it was my last night in splendid Sydney, I passed up the tame offerings of Hungry Jack's in search of something a little less synthetic.

On the city's arterial George Street, there is an entire universe of restaurants, but when filtered through my budgetary constraints, barely a handful remained. I was about to give up and trace my way back to Hungry Jack's when I stumbled on a Turkish restaurant.

Listening to first Gary Kirsten and then MS Dhoni trotting out one excuse after another for the pathetic show in England would have you believe that this Indian team had no chance at all in the T20 World Cup. So, were the players fatigued after the IPL, were some of them carrying injuries or niggles, and had some of the batsmen suddenly lost their form?

Obviously, there's some truth in all those claims, but it's not the whole truth. The fact is it would be very convenient for the coach and captain if those were to be seen as the real reasons why India did so badly. But the hypothesis falls flat as soon as you subject it to a little scrutiny.

On a Trent Bridge pitch, where spinners had caused havoc in previous matches, India chose to deploy a three-pronged pace attack. Between the three of them, they bowled just six overs and even those were too many. It's elementary that at least one of them could have made way for an extra batsman (Dinesh Karthick) or a specialist spinner (Pragyan Ojha).

I saw red.

Red as in red light.

It stared at me unblinking. Obedient to a fault, I stopped my car. Conscious of the new rules for driving to save petrol, I switched my engine off.

A persistent honking was happening behind my car. Loud and insistent, as an impatient bus driver tried to make me move on with the sheer force of his blast.

I wondered quickly if I was blocking his way... to a right turn. I was not.

Meanwhile, another bus pulled alongside and went lumbering on ahead. Past me, past the light.

I saw red again,. A flash of it before my eyes.

A flash of it in my brain. As in danger. What if... I thought, seeing fleeting imagas of motorcyclists or pedestrians cutting across the bus's path.

Its a personally frustrating situation for the most of the environmentally conscious individuals. Everyone who agrees that there is something wrong with our environment doesnt know exactly what can be done to undo the damage. We all know what is causing damage, but none of us are in a position to prevent it.

None of the NGOs, voluntary organisations, governments or even United Nations' set-ups have been effective in restraining exploitation of environment the world over. There is no power on earth which can ask the United States to curb or reduce the consumption pattern. In a liberalised economy the boost is on improving lifestyle and consumerism, which necessarily means dumping more CO2 in the environment.

In 1971, India won a comprehensive victory against Pakistan. It as in this war that the Indian Navy vanquished the Pakistani Navy, bombing Karachi and preventing the retreating Pakistani troops from escaping by sea in Bangladesh, even as the Indian Army smashed the Pakistani forces while the Indian Air Force controlled the skies in just a couple of days. This victory has meant no major war ever since and a Navy to reckon with.

The man who led the navy in 1971 was Admiral SM Nanda, who expired on May 11.

Now, if anyone wants to know why India has been one of the most invaded countries, why its greatest battles in history ended in defeats (from Alexander defeating Porus to Panipat to Plassey) we could start by seeing how we treat our war heroes.

Nanda was cremated with mere naval honours. President Patil, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Defence Minister A K Antony, did not attend. Shamefully, the army and air force chiefs did not turn up.

The brilliant Portuguese novelist and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago crafts the ultimate nightmare of ballot box democracy in his novel, Seeing: after a national election, polling officers discover that over 70 per cent of the votes are blank. The voters have en masse conveyed their disillusionment, "not with one party, but with all, thereby rendering the entire democratic system useless." The government orders a re-poll, and this time 83 per cent of the votes are blank. The terrified authorities declare a state of emergency. I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, so I won't say any more about it.

But I wish somebody would distribute free copies of this novel to all those hyper-energetic Jaago Re types who have taken it upon themselves to protect the modesty of Indian democracy.

"Maine Rajiv Gandhi ko khoon deeya hai," said a close relative rather emphatically, while waiting outside the operation theatre my grandfather was being operated on, late last week.

The statement attracted considerable attention from everyone standing around. "He must have had a rare blood group," quipped one. "Maybe an AB-," added another.

Of course when the truth was revealed, it turned out to be a damp squib. She had donated blood on the occasion of Rajiv Gandhi Akshay Urja Divas (which is celebrated on August 20, as a tribute to the late Prime Minister on his birth anniversary).

When the entire incident was recounted to me, I felt like saying in a rather filmy fashion, "Mere ragon main Genghis Khan ka khoon daud raha hai." This wouldn't really be untrue. There was some research a few years ago by an international group of geneticists studying the Y-chromosome which indicated that nearly 8% of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry Y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5% of the male population in the world or roughly 16 million descendants living today. You can read the complete story here.

I have just received a letter from Amitabh Bachchan. Correction-I am among several journalists who have received a letter from Amitabh Bachchan. It is a copy of a long letter he has sent to the Times of India in response to an article by Jug Suraiya. Suraiya, in a column on March 1, took many potshots at Bachchan for the latter's alleged critical comments on Slumdog Millionare.

While running down Bachchan for making those comments, Suraiya's column also brought in many other charges against Bachchan, invoking earlier reports about the star having conducted religious ceremonies to get rid of the "Manglik" curse on his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai.

Several people I have met over the past week have argued that this question presupposes the survival of the state of Pakistan. But that reduces the recent tragedy in Lahore to a kind of frenzied rhetoric that is not the concern of this article. Cricket lovers, all said and done, are romantics, not even hard-boiled realists, leave aside cynics.

Mushy sentimentalism has surely no place in these troubled times, of course. What happened in Lahore was horrific. The fact that the Sri Lankan team was assaulted by armed gunmen gives lie to the belief that cricketers face no threat in the sub-continent. We now have to live with the new reality that nothing and nobody is exempt from the terror threat.

But Pakistan cricket, in as much as is possible, needs to be seen distinct from whatever else is happening in the country. Indeed, if help is forthcoming from other cricket-playing countries, it will not only help sustain the sport in that country, but might perhaps also further the larger cause of keeping young minds away from other ills that threaten to usurp everyday life there. Indeed, as Younis Khan has said, cricket could be the panacea for the state of Pakistan itself.

Someday I shall write another kind of blog. Not about terrorism and guns and carnage and worse.

I will write about other things.

I will write about winter in Delhi (where I am visiting soon) and how the women bring out their choicest shawls and the men dress like they were in a Jane Austen novel.

I will write about how much I miss Mumbai’s three departed chroniclers-Busybee, Frank Simoes and Dom Moraes. (I wonder what words they would have chosen to describe what we’ve been through.)

I will write about the boys who sell books and magazines at traffic lights who I’ve come to befriend when they hitch rides off me from point A to B. All of them bright, enterprising, needy. All of them with the same story. (I’m working to pay off my school fees.) I once tried to find one at the address he’d given me to arrange for his fees-and was told no one by that name existed-but that’s another story….

I will write about Cat Stevens and his latest album after so many years of silence, which at first I didn’t enjoy but slowly began to appreciate.

The relentless TV coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks is an indication of both its success and failure. Over the last three or four days, I have received lots of email criticising TV coverage of the event. Among other things, TV reporters have been accused of giving away critical information to the terrorists by indicating the size of the NSG forces, etc, etc. In particular, Barkha Dutt seems to have become a particular hate target, with bloggers harshly critical of her breathless and emotional coverage of the Taj and other operations.

I am no fan of TV coverage. In the pursuit of TRPs, TV anchors tend to look for ways to hook the viewer, and often this means catering to low tastes (especially in the regional media), and sensationalism. I am particularly aggrieved, since relentless TV coverage of a triviality forces newspapers to follow suit - since TV often sets the news agenda.

However, I would also like to say this in defence of TV mediapersons. One, if they are all that bad, why are we still watching them? During the Mumbai attacks, most people I know were glued to TV. We now know that even the cabinet secretary and the National Security Advisor were probably watching TV for a first-hand feel of what was happening in Mumbai on that day.