Thursday, November 30, 2006

epicurus

I know I havent lived in Bangalore long enough to comment on its food scene, but the past twelve months' experience qualifies me to hazard one...

long ago and not so long ago, Bangalore and it's counterpart Hyderabad used to abound in what were called the Kamats and Shanbhags... those remnants of a beautiful era gone by, and sad, they have to be addressed as remnants... where men in white who waited the tables were more than anything else, smartly and neatly dressed and by the virtue of which were qualified to wait the tables... ask those Murthys, Sharmas, Mantripragadas, Rangaswamys, Raos and those dozens of Kannada, Telugu Brahmins who swore by it and by those tumblers of filter coffee... these places were the perfect addresses for the old world charm which is an oasis now... the chutneys and sambars would be gorged and gulped by gallons and these good men were only too happy to refill those perfect round vessels every time they went dry... the tables were clean and simple... no frills no jazz, and sometimes the better off ones in slightly upmarket areas were well cushioned... but all in all simplicity was the theme... this extended to the lighting as well... these were also the addresses for a few maddos like us of K-Circle, whose BBbath guzzling activities were meant to be witnessed... Quite sadly these are disappearing from the scene... they are far and few between in Hyderabad and it isnt much different in Bangalore... while a few Kamats can be spotted, Shanbhags, I fear are dinosaurs now... Masala Dosas would never appear that perfect brown, and roasted to perfection... or wait!

Circa '96 and '97....Bangalore was witnessing a mini revolution which later took Hyderabad by storm... these guys from northern Karnataka simply rewrote the rules what with their Darshinis and Sagars... get in Shiv, Sukh, Krishna, Sudha, Mayura to add to the names and more often than not you had names of the hotels that were literally a combination of any of these with darshinis and sagars as the tail... kind of incestuous, I must add... others stood up to their success stories, and quite literally... out went the chairs and the tables... people had to make do with round tables and some of which were attached to the walls, albeit in different shapes!!! you were the king if you could elbow your way out into the middle and find a place for yourself... the focus was on fast food(no, not the food we have come to associate that phrase with), okay quick food... where there was no time to reminisce the good days of The Indian Express or the Sudha Raghunathan concert at RangaShankara... eat and leave!... the prices were competitive and one didnt mind loosening the wallets for one got one's money's worth... quite a fatal blow to relatively high brow Kamat brethren, who came at a premium... the other aspect that interested a lot of folks was the fact that most of the fare was made could be witnessed, barring a few exceptions... again more often than not the focus was on cleanliness and promptness...
they were big enough to accommodate the Aryan food as well and may be, just may be the success of these places could be attributed to this...


somewhere in between were squeezed the small time players, who faded slowly into oblivion... these were the Gururajs and Raghavendras and the like... these were characterised by huge sign boards with huge embossed name plates adorning the entrances... these led to the cash counters that stocked apart from the obvious, a pack of Bournvita, a small charity box, a small case loaded with vadas and Mysore Paks... not to forget, the huge Raghavendra Swamy laminations that decorated the walls with their multicolored serial lights... they could be regarded as the poor man's Kamats and catered to the basic instincts of their clientele, culinary of course... they can still be spotted in small towns, mostly temple towns... wooden tables with flat perfectly rectangular uncushioned sofas, typified these joints...

no elaborate menus, the options were limited and could be rattled off by the waiter faster than the TGV...


the general feel that I get about Bangalore is that here people love to eat out... and I repeat, Bangaloreans love to eat out... there is absolutely no reason required for them... a general feel good factor prevails about this eating out phenomenon... men and women in all sizes and shapes and all counts of teeth come out and simply enjoy themselves... and it doesnt bother them if they have ordered Upittu or a Rava Dosa or a Kara Bath or a Chow Chow Bath for the evening, something which they would have eaten the same morning at their own places... and which by no means is a speciality for them... the feel good factor also percolates right down to the food and the decor... the biggest draw is the way food is served on a banana leaf that just takes the gastronomic experience to altogether a different level... right time for this? quite obviously the breakfast time... the food is almost always served in the most perfect manner and the visual satisfaction cannot be discounted... the decorations and the embellishments are all trademark Bangalore, to the extent of serving a bhelpuri with coconut gratings and groundnuts... the Grant Road, Matunga, Mahalakshmi, Dadar citizens would die of a heart attack...


ignore the carts that sprout as the dusk sets in and that rule late into the night at your own risk... take them for no dingy places... they serve the most sumptuous and quite surprisingly neat fare that you could lay your hands on... and may be these dudes want themselves to be taken seriously for their prices are quite high... end result? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... the civics, the wagon-Rs, the altos in the bylanes of Jayanagars and Malleswarams would vouch for that... car seva anyone?


then there are the Little Italys, the Mast Kalandars, the Grameens, the Olive Orchards, the Civets of JP Nagars, Indiranagars, Koramangalas, and the ITPLs... these are essentially heavy on your purse and that goes without saying... each one tries to carve a space for itself in the junta's minds with food that is meant to be different, esoteric at times...

tucked away in those little pockets of Bangalore are also the ghee stores that double up as idli vada stalls and like I said they are meant to be ghee stores that also sell coffee powder... quite mindboggling... items of breakfast double up as the savories for snack time with a few changes here and there... so dont be surprised if you find Janaki Hegdes or Prashant Gowdas ordering idlis at 6.00 in the evening something which would be met with a chee chee in Hyderabad ( "aur kuch nahi mila be khaane ku... item yeh kya khaara re... item hai kya"), a phenomenon Bangalore can afford to call its won... Madras comes close, I reckon...


Bangalore is not short of any Andhra style chains that probably would have made more moolah here than what they would have in their native... the non-veg delicacies served at Mayuras, Bheemas and Nandinis are touted to be part of folklore out here...

speciality ice cream shops that whip up the best of cold stuff money could buy here and with zany names attached to them, could be found at places deemed important...

messes both North Indian style and the southern could be easily spotted and my theory on how to spot and differentiate a North Indian customer from his southern counterpart all by just the eating habits with a special note on the Bengal species will form another post... coming soon

cuisines from all corners of the globe find themselves represented at some do or the other in Bangalore and speciality restaurants aren't any less...


all in all Bangalore is a paradise for gourmets and gourmands alike, quite a far cry from my Hyderabad (sad to say that as we do not want to budge from the plates that serve biryani and khubani ka meetha) dishing out stuff for all ages, colors, purses and ultimately doing best in what it can... keep up the feel good factor...


Red Herring: the diameter of the Masala Dosa is shrinking by the day out here and at a rate faster than my girth size... while I see my girth shrink stop at a point, the Masala Dosa refuses to stop, quite disproportionately to the cost... be warned, my dear budd from Ypsilanti, these round small wonders threaten to disappear before I count all odd numbers from 1 to 10 starting with 3, and remember, you read it here first... trust me, next time you come down here you shall be treated to such fantastic fare, you will refuse to leave these shores again, maa kasam...

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Unreal Estate

what's with these tv channels and the print magazines that seem to have run out of their creative juices of late ? Not that the juices had been overflowing in the first place... but the scene looks parched quite clearly... and it's quite disturbing no hyperbole that...

dont we deserve much better? one look around and it could be noticed that the media abounds in stories and features on either or almost all of the following, and the latter is more likely...

an annual states and CM's survey to begin with on a "serious" note and if the press wallah had the balls not to suck up to some political bigwig's derriere, a report card on the PM and extend it further, the Italian of the East too...

ten best towns to live in, ten big stocks to go in for, ten best shopping malls, ten best lingerie brands, and for me the ultimate annual farce--- the best MBA schools... as if the b-schools produce some ground breaking results in those twelve months that warrants a groundbreaking survey which have these schools fall down a few notches or rise up and raise the bar!!! what have we here? a column or two from the experts, get in an aspiring i-banker who is in the 0.001 of the cream after having been culled and chaffed from the lesser mortals, page or two on the occidental biggies and how we differ from them, and the yes that proposition that all this holy farce revolves around... placements and more placements... of day zeroes to PPOs... it's definitely not a case of sour grapes and good for the people who go through it... but the way our fourth estate goes on about it, with either TRPs on more circulation in its minds, drives me up the wall

the most powerful people, the most powerful people in the industry, the most powerful people in Bollywood... the usual suspects? an ambani here, a mittal there, a chopra here, a king khan there... throw in a Mazumdar, a Reddy, a Jain, a Nooyi for the balance... yes read on, in short well framed boxes adjoining the well framed photos, about their work ethics, their favorite cigar brand, their penchant for big wheels, if they like set curd or a loose one...


do a cover on a one film wonder only to be ripped apart later when the junta doesnt want to go ga ga anymore for they have found another wonder... what a blunder!!!

steam up the scene a bit... do the annual sex survey... tell us how we like to kiss our spouses... which side of the bed should we be waking up on to find our mates more appealing... bring in statistics from the surveys you have carried out in bhatinda, kanpur, jhansi, lucknow, asansole, bhilai, tirupur, alleppey, vijayawada, surat and shimla...tell us there has been a revolution of sorts in the years gone by, when we have become more open and have warmed ourselves to the idea of erotica in open and the age of coming out of the closets... tell us atleat 34% of the respondents wants its share of extramarital flings... tell us people are no more "shy" to ask for their strawberry flavored latex.. or is it vanilla? gothilla... then as a tail piece get an NGO to pen something on AIDS awareness and the need for sex education right from primary school level and carry out an opposing piece, all worthy of a debate, to balance it out... balance it out??? when all the titillation and sales factor is taken care of???? make no mistake, i am no prude, and for all my openness in the real sense of the word, I find it quite disgusting to take this pre-chewed-ill-packaged fare ... sorry I cant digest that


ok ok i forgot... the annual car survey... how we have moved on from our and the best source of nirvana in 1993, the Zen and are ready to lap up the maseratis, the endeavours, the camrys and the hummys... how Chunkey Pandey still likes his 95' Landcruiser and watch Upen Patel and Queeny Dhodie debate over whether automatic transmission or not? what to expect in the Fall '07 and '08 with all the letters in the English alphabet turning out to be insufficient to describe the mushrooming segements in cars... and ha yes ! how on earth could I forget Rajinder Puri with his piece on his first and beloved '800 and how he has had to be on the waiting list for aeons and among the first few to be handed over the keys by a certain Kapil Paaji...

give us all "the milestones of the decade", "the milestones of the millenium", " the red letter days".... get in all here again...through a lensman's eyes.... the freedom struggle , the hoisting of the flag on the ramparts of the red fort, the first annual budget, Appu'82, Lord's 83 and punch in the line "when david downed goliath", Maruti Udyog, Indira behinds the shades, Milkha Singh, P T Usha, a saffron clad NTR atop his Ratham and fighting for our aatmagauravam, the ushering of new age soft gloss ads of the 80s, , Ravi Shastri in the best of lankiness with his audi and irritatingly audible now, show the boost boy in his first roots and branches of moustache, still wet behind his ears gearing up to W & W....have P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in a single frame and laud them for their liberal thoughts, the Sriperumbudur'91 massacre, the gargantuan barjatya monster HAHK with an olive green clad Dixit showing a well etched posterior to the devar deewana, walk us up through the streets of Bombay of '93 and remind us of the ghastly blasts... oh it's '98 now... tell us how a chubby lad with johar for a surname has "revolutionised the economics of Indian Cinema and changed its face forever", with his in-your-face Polos, DKNYs, cool bracelet offerings all the while have us chant Om Jai Jagadeesh Hare and Vandemataram, stoking our patriotic flame... oh it's also '98 now... time to get a little serious, balance it, right? show us a Kalam and Vajpayee in their red caps and battery of officials and scientists going nuclear,,, Buddha is definitely smiling... the dotcoming of age of the net in '00 and ever so cool hotmail Bhatia, ... it's '00 and '01 -- dish out a little on the booming sunrise sectors IT and ITES nah BPO for us... tell us the spending patterns and ever so burgeoning disposable incomes Pharma, you can wait... '02 ,yes we stand up to the shirt whirling dada in the balcony again... the years pass by... tell us about the real estate of Bangalore and Gurgaon and Noida and show us the best abodes money can buy in Amby Valleys and Puravankaras... or sorry reserve that for "the ten best homes you should see"


carry out a special on good things in life, we are so starved for them... the best perfumes, villas, sarongs, the hot haute, the pret-a-porter lines, the best of art(it's such an investment thing now) get in anjali ela menons and gujrals to talk art... the islands we shouldnt miss, the best of casinos...


it's time to get serious again... carry a special on money matters and how serious life insurance business is now... talk of investment options and the need for your child's secure future... tell us what the experts have to say... give us cosy pictures of couples and families from Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Cochin, Jamshedpur and tell us how they have sailed through their tough times... get in Mahesh Bhupathi, Suniel Shetty, Annu Mallieek, Gufi Paintal and have the experts in them tell us what to do and how they manage their finances or dont...


yes, those urban phenomena that come with a regularity of a Hailley's comet and change the face of the world as we know it... use juicy acronyms, DINK (Double Income No Kids) ABCD (American Born Confused Desis), KANK.. tell us the world is not the same after what they have told us... atleast not after KANK...


tell us about the feel good factor prevalent all over.... rehash the same stuff... old wine, older bottle... get Dr.Balasubramanian, Mahesh Bhatt, Shobhaa De in... also give us an insight of what Diya Mirza and Chunkey Pandey think of "the decline of communism in China and Russia and it's global implications"...


it's that time of the year again... get serious again... annual best colleges survey... quite earth shattering!!!


ok ok the best hits of the year so far... why? it's June, Joneses... the blockbuster time... tell us the hits so far and the misses so far.. tell what to expect in the coming months and how crores ride on such films... tell us what taran adarsh, amod mehra think of them... do a special on the "new breed of bollywood" and do wonderful boxes on choreographers, cinematographers, hotshot editors, and publicity designers... it's perfectly okay by us if it's not a serious article as long as the spice factor is taken care of, we can gulp it down...


matter for the mind?... what's that??? below the belt ... hmmm that's like it!


my intention is definitely not to sound cynical here but going by the trend and that which is unlikely to change, there's no choice... and I haven't dared getting into that dirty zone called TV channels and P3P and I better stop here...

"for those yearning for some good stuff there's always Reader's Digest na!!"


yes, my ultimate source of credibility and magical realism, of hope, of joy, of inspiration, of mega tonnes of laughter, of the connect, of the belief, of craziness, of LIFE and of again loads of laughter...Reader's Digest... I am afraid the rate at which it also is changing, it might cease to be...

and that's no good Final Condensation, Mr.Wallace

Monday, November 20, 2006

of teental and strums-2

nah! i am not bitten by the sequel bug prevalent now, it's just a recall of my earlier piece on how magical the strings-on-the-percussion combo is and something which could turn mundane, dry tracks into music for ears (pun intended)


for the two marvellous tracks "tere bina" and "ay hairathe" and that out-of-this world operatic piece "jaage hain" many thanks...

for the almost orgasmic, close to mesmerising and intoxicating backing vocals on ay hairathe, many thanks...

for pushing the envelope yet again effectively, and smartly, many thanks...

so what if it might not be heard on the disc spinning trance techno club spurting pubs, and mofussil orchestras, many thanks...

for a work that truly grows on you and lives with you as years pass by, many thanks...




truly you are an Allah Rakha...

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Hyderabad Hues

no sooner had I stepped out of the picturesque station, than I was besieged by an army of autowallahs...

"Lodge" asked one...

"Kahan ko jaana saab" questioned the other...

"aaoo baitho"!...

Armed with a confidence that I would get a fair deal further ahead, I marched... in despair.

Within that short walk of mine, I began to notice something... the autos were looking fat, obese and yellow!!! that was quite a departure from the prim prom counterparts of Bangalore...

was the color of an auto coloring my tastes and opinions?? had Bangalore taken over?

and within that short span of time, I wondered if I had changed... if I had started already unbelonging... One of my buddies had also the same complaint... I had no answer then...

cut to the present... I was losing my patience and an autowallah managed to convince me... the auto had moved a small distance and the conversation started..

"kahan chodna saab DSNR mein?"...

"Chaitanyapuri"

"One and half dedo saab"

"Kaiku"?

"Return khaali aana padtha saab"?

"Return khaali kaiku aathe?? bada centre hai naa... dekho! naye aaye so logon ku bolo yeh sab... chaubees saalon se jeere yahaan... yahi bade hue"


The auto dude went silent... and all I could hear was the revving Bajaj engine

WOW... I was jubilant... for a guy who becomes tongue tied at the right moment and just gives in to the demands of others to keep it going and to retain the good will, this was a surprise...


I wanted to shout out loud...


Maaki kirkiri

pick '06

here's my pick of the year, that has been cinematically really good so far, and he descends only in December.


Omkara
Rang De Basanti
Lage Raho Munnabhai


Rang De Basanti just swept me off my feet and went on to become a cult, a well deserved status. Take a bow Rakesh Mehra for the sheer gumption... Aks wasn't a flash in the pan...


Lage Raho Munnabhai had Raju Hirani in an amazing form, continuing from where he had left in the first installment... It just showed how a feel good fare, in the Hrishikesh Mukherjee mould, could be made without being overtly maudlin and confining syrups to medical stores... Thanks


I could talk nineteen to the dozen about Omkara and yes, I know that... and I also know I will run out of adjectives... my hero of the movie? Sorry Saif! for all your fireworks that would put the Sivakasi factories to shame, you get a consolation! It's a tie between Vishal Bhardwaj and Tassaduq Hussain... If Omkara was anything to go by, all its filial and sibling expletives notwithstanding, Vishal Bhardwaj should be one auteur to watch out for...

The magician should be smiling...