I love the Monsoons!

       Waking up in the mornings these days is tougher than it has ever been! When my alarm goes off and I realize its morning already, I see the glass window misty with all the dew and listen to sound of the rain drops from the night’s rain dripping down into a puddle from the trees in the empty site next to my bedroom window and the mental war begins. Curled up under my green wonder blanket, life seems perfect the way it is on early weekday mornings and I am tempted to keep it that way, without having to wake up and rush into the day against my will! But ho-hum, we all know how it is :( Bread and butter people! I better get my lazy ass off the bed and into the office bus. It’s not easy...not easy at all!

        And the bus ride to office in my cosy office bus takes this mental battle to the next level. We take a route that does not touch any of the main city roads. We take the highway! Not much traffic, very few traffic signals and a driver who seems to be a Schumacher incarnate, it can’t get any better. Bangalore is just stirring into action at that time of the morning, the school kids are waiting for their yellow bus to arrive, the smell of fresh jasmine flowers wafts in through the open windows at the traffic signal where the flower vendors try to sell a fresh garland of stringed jasmine flowers for decorating the Ganesha idol that sits demurely on the dashboard of our bus...The roadside dosa-cart is in full action already and the labourers are digging into their breakfast, a steaming hot dosa, before they rush off to the construction site on the other side of the road.

                                               

       A few kilometres on the highway, watching the city wake up to life and we reach the place where we take a right turn into heaven. Heaven it is! Every morning, we pass through the woods that are a part of the Bangalore University, lush green in all their glory and freshly washed from the night’s rain, sparkling in the early sunlight. It’s oooh-so-amazing! I try not to doze off on the 45-minute bus ride to office. I just do not want to miss this stretch of road that passes through the woods :) Once we reach office, the morning breakfast session on the 6th floor cafeteria, with an amazing view of the faraway hills around Bangalore is another part of my day that I would hate to miss! The rest of the morning passes away in work, conference calls and a million other chores at work. During the lunch break, we venture out to the food court outside our campus and usually find a seat at the edge of the building which looks out into an endless stretch of empty land, bare, except for the green bed of grass. Our lunch break is filled with lots of girly talk, giggling and laughing and discussing matters of “utmost importance” ;). And nowadays, at least for the past week, it has been raining during the lunch breaks and we totally love it! Rains during lunch breaks calls for something that is hot, spicy and tasty. What better than a plate of juicy chicken? ;) A stray black dog that lives on the campus wanders to the edge of the food court in the afternoons and we give him a treat of leftover bones, which he happily bites into, wagging his tail :)

                                  

        All through this weekend, it has either been cloudy, drizzling or pouring. And I am totally loving it ! Nothing is more blissful than a lazy weekend at home, sitting by the window with a coffee, reading a novel and breathing in the damp air, heavy with the moisture from the rains..Aaah, Heaven! :D I morph into a total couch potato during the Indian monsoons...But yeah, I have to admit, the monsoons here are not all about happiness..There are people who have to put up with leaking roofs, flooded streets, overflowing drains and what not! You would definitely want to curse the rains, if you were stuck outside in the streets, with the waters swirling around your knees. But when you are sitting cross legged on your favourite chair at home, typing away to glory, you have the licence to romanticise the Indian rains and wax eloquence about its beauty ;) The more I write about how much I enjoy the monsoons, the guiltier I feel about not going off on a vacation :( I would so love to trudge through the dense jungles of Karnataka right now. It is at times like these that I wish I had what it takes to be a vagabond....Truck loads of money and nothing better to do ;) :D But then, we all know how it is! What is this life if, full of care! Remember this poem from school? :)

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Eat Street Bangalore !

     Being the foodie that I am, I have covered pretty much all the well known restaurants in Bangalore. Indian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Continental, Italian, Afghani, you name it! While some places were nothing less than paradise, there are quite a few restaurants that did not quite tingle my tastebuds. I have been meaning to write a review about some of my favourite eateries for some time now. But reviewing food is no easy task. I am someone who literally worships food. My plate is always clean after a meal, I don’t waste a single grain of food. I always say no to materialistic gift items and always insist that anyone who wants to give me a gift could treat me to a nice dinner instead. While I do not promote gluttony, I do indulge in it once in a while ;)

     When was the last time you felt so hungry that you thought you could eat a horse? What exactly did you do then? Did you indulge in gluttony or did you just console yourself with a snack? It was on one such “dying out of hunger” occasions that two of my friends and I decided to hit the best street in Bangalore. The EAT Street. We were coming back home in the office bus when we our stomachs started grumbling aloud. Two minutes later, stuck in a mighty traffic jam, we decided enough was enough and got out of the bus. A half a mile walk and two auto rides later, we were at VV Puram, which is one of the oldest areas in Bangalore and also house to the “world famous in Bangalore” Eat Street :)

Bangalore’s Eat Street is nothing like the fancy Eat Street in Hyderabad. Our Eat Street is basically a line of humble shacks that churn out some of the best street food that I have EVER eaten. At the fag end of the street is VB Bakery, one of Bangalore’s oldest and best bakeries. It is the oldest landmark in that area and any old Bangalorean worth his salt will easily locate the quaint little bakery where the items get sold out in a matter of an hour! The place makes steady business and remains crowded until late hours in the evening. You can choose to begin your culinary journey at Eat Street either from the VB Bakery end or from the other end of the street where the line of shacks begin!

       We chose to begin from the other end . Our first stop was at the Idly stall. Served on a leaf with a splatter of coconut chutney and sambar, the idlies here just melt in your mouth ! The guy who makes them pulls the tray straight from the steaming vessel, scoops out the fluffy idlis into a leaf and hands it over. Being a South Indian, I know my Idly well ! And I am quite a critique when it comes to rating idlis. But trust me, the idlis at this place simply blew me away ! Being the gluttons that we are, my friends and I decided that instead of ordering 3 plates of idlis, we could just order one plate and share it. That way we could savour ALL the items on Eat Street :P. The idlies vanished in less than a minute. Half my mind wanted to order another plate while the other half wanted to scoot to the next stall and gulp down the Onion dosa!

    To say that the onion dosa was divine would be an understatement! The dosa was actually a piece of art! Half the fun at Eat Street lies in standing by the stall and watching the men cook your food right in front of you. After skilfully spreading out the dosa batter on the hot plate, the guy punched a hole in a packet of Nandini ghee and simply poured a torrent of ghee all over the dosa. Pure, unadulterated ghee! After topping the dosa with chopped onions and cooking it over the flame for a minute, our onion dosa, dripping with ghee, smelling like heaven ended up on our single plate. Without even waiting to chew the dosa in the mouth, we dug into the next piece like hungry dogs. Ashamed of being so ravenous, I looked around to make sure no one was watching us. My fears met with a happy end. EVERY single person around that stall was eating as if he/she hadn’t seen food for months together! Gluttony is all the more sweet when you have a large group indulging in it. But seriously, the dosa was so good that we just couldn’t stop with one. Two more dosas later, we moved on to the next stall.

      The next stall was a Sino-Indian venture, if you know what I mean. Yeah, a gobi Manchurian and fried rice counter. NOPE. I had seen enough of this Chinese-Indian combo and decided to give it a skip. Just then the guy passing by us from the other side of the road burped so loud, that we HAD to find out where he was coming from ! :P The packet in his hand gave away the secret. The hot jalebi and rabri counter!

      This shop was so crowded, that we had to literally push and pull to make it to the counter and place our order. Some ten minutes later, we were happily digging into hot Jalebis dipped into a tiny pot of Radbi. For the uninitiated, rabri is like a sweet yogurt kind of thing, made out of milk and God knows what ! Whatever it was, it was delicious! It was so good that I ordered a quarter kilo of jalebis to carry home. It is almost cruel to eat good food alone ;) And those hot jalebis definitely deserved to be carried home for the family :)

       By the time our jalebis could find their way down our throats, we were digging into a huge masala papad. A simple combination of a roasted papad, topped with tomatoes, onions ,salt chilli powder, green chillies and chaat masala, the masala papad was a light and tasty break from all the high calorie food. Following our healthy trend, we ended up at the “Congress” stall. “Congress” is essentially a a mixture of healthy carrot scraps and a variety of lentils , crisp and crunchy like a salad. The “Congress” makes for a very good snack when you want your tummy to take some time to settle down and take a break :P

      After lingering over the Congress bowl for about twenty minutes, we have made enough space in our tummies for a generous bowl of dessert. Our next obvious stop had to definitely be at the Gulkhand store. The Gulkhand is a sweet, sticky dessert made out of rose petals drowned in sugar syrup with a variety of additions to enhance the flavour. You can choose to top the Gulkhand with either a dollop of vanilla ice cream or with a generous helping of home-made, unsalted butter. Both the combinations are great. However, we chose to top it with a mixture of chopped dry fruits and it tasted marvellous with a capital M ! :-D

   It was 8 PM when we started our gastromonical extravaganza. By the time we reached the end of the street, we were in front of VB Bakery and the time was 10:15 PM. We did not have the courage to venture into the bakery to eat something. So we quickly ran in, packed some spiced biscuits, some chow-chow mixture and ran out in less than 15 minutes, just in time to catch the ONLY auto waiting on the street. We paid the driver thrice more than what we normally would and reached home weighing atleast a couple of kilos more than what we were before.

      As I trudged into the gate, waddling like a duck, I was trying my best to stop burping out aloud. I held up the packet of jalebis with a placid expression on my face to explain my condition. When I finally settled down into the couch, I let out a groan and I swear I sounded like a content pig :P After I had regained enough strength to get out of the lethargy induced by the binge, I sang praises about Eat Street for about half an hour and then slipped into a food coma for the rest of the night and half of the next morning :D

       It next morning being Saturday, the conditions were extremely favourable for my food induced coma to continue. With a blissful recollection of the gastronomical extravaganza, I highly recommend Eat Street or Thindi Beedi as it is otherwise known. It is a MUST-VISIT. If you are a total foodie, you will definitely come back content ! If you are a poor eater, it is sure gonna prove to be one of those sunny days when even you cannot stop eating ;)

      For my Blog Frog friends : Do drop in a comment if you are curious to know more about the alien food names..I will be glad to share the details with you : )

**pics from the internet

Where is the Bengaluru i loved?!

     I was born in Bangalore at just the right time. The timing could not have been better. I just managed to make it here before the gulmohars vanished forever from the roadside. Thankfully, I had a chance to set up a tent under the gulmohar tree on the road-side for 3 consecutive summers, before someone decided that the trees had to go. The vacant site opposite my house was getting all spruced up to welcome a new house on our street. And I remember three Ashok Leyland lorries standing shoulder to shoulder on the street. The roads in the residential areas were THAT wide. Well of course, only until Mrs.Iyer next door decided to dig up a 8x8 plot in front of her gate to plant her rose bushes. And then the guy who was building the new house in the vacant site decided he wanted a larger garage and conveniently replaced his concrete wall with a collapsible grill gate that made enough space for his car to stick it’s butt out into the road without actually putting him into trouble for taking up public space. When people decide to shout at him, all he has to do is to get the grills removed. No wall to pull down, no loss of money. And as long as he could be good friends with his neighbors, no problem either!

    The ancestral house in our village was built on a 5-acre plot. On all sides of the house, endless stretches of paddy fields and groundnut farms welcomed the winds into our compound. Within the compound, the lush garden on all 4 sides was my grandmother’s dream come true. With an open well, a flower-bed spread lavishly on more than an acre of land, people who visited my grandparents’ home, instantly fell in love with it! Well, again, only until Farmer Gibbs( I don’t know the guy’s name) decided to build an unsightly granary to completely block the view on one side  And what’s worse! His entire farmland, over the years, was slowly converted into a rice mill, with tractors milling down our private inroad, throwing up dust into the air and totally spoiling the ambience of the place :(

     If this is the case in a distant village, no prizes for guessing the state of cities like Bangalore. No more tree-lined avenues, no more independent villas and no more parks…Residential roads look like passages now and the main roads are meant for traffic jams and nothing else. Spacious temple compounds have now shrunken to the entrance of the temple, bringing the Gods to the edge of the street. Apartments line the skyline, whatever trees remain, is only because the guy who built the apartment block can put up a “ excellent landscaping” tag in his advertisement and charge an extra 2 lakhs for the feature ..

    What I miss the most though, are the sparrows. Last weekend, I drove down to visit my extended family at a village 3 hours from Bangalore and was so happy to see these little fellows strutting around on the terrace, picking up grains on the parapet wall. But yeah, not in flocks anymore…maximum 5-6 of them…but at least, they are not totally extinct yet...That’s a small consolation.

    Now that the city is totally packed, it’s time for the outskirts to squeeze in. Farmers get handsome amounts to let go of their land. And the entire expanse gets converted into 100 40x60 sites. “Enjoy the serenity, away from the city!” scream the advertisements. And slowly, as we continue to grow as a city, we will see houses here too and we will probably move into wildlife reserves very soon “ Live with the elephants!” would be the next ad in the papers…

    At this rate, the classic Indian dream of Roti, kapda and Makaan will begin to realize. With roti and kapda being almost readily available , the makhaan dream is now becoming true. Soon, each one of us will have a home of our own. One for you, one for your brother, one for your sister and one for your pet dog. And yes, we will have garages that peep into the streets, making our houses look like uneasy pregnants. We will zip around in our fancy cars if the traffic clears up. Life looks perfect.

   But what will be eat?! The farms are gone. We will import grains from some other country which has been sensible enough to retain some of it’s farms. And we will pay 500 rupees for a kilo of rice. And then we will yell at the government for not doing anything about controlling the prices. Voila! We have a plan!

And for some 10 years or so, we will pat our backs as we finally get to live the roti, kapda,makaan dream. Only until the roti and kapda begin to vanish….just like the sparrows did.

   And then the regal Indian will sit in his makhaan and dream about roti and kapda…Politicians will promise you a meal for every vote. Our entire population will go the Mallika Sherawat way and wear a hand-kerchief for a dress…bored of seeing scantily dressed people, Sridevi in a sari becomes a fantasy!

  And then finally, some wise head will decide that enough is enough…He will pull down a few houses to make space for some gulmohar trees…Another guy picks up the trend and razes down his old apartment block to make a farmhouse..People begin to dream of owning their own farm..Old buildings go down, new farms come up…People go back to being farmers…We begin to grow our own food again..And one day, rice prices will go down to Rs.40 per kilo…Roti comes back, and so does kapda…for the next 20 years that is…And after that, people start missing their makhaans…And then the cycle continues…..

The roti,kapda,makhaan dream will remain a dream!