Tag: bangalore

Worlds best Masala Dosa and Vada Sambar – CTR and Janata

My wife and I are proper foodies. We just love food – any food (anything vegetarian that is). The facilities/admin manager at my workplace knows that -since I am probably the only guy who goes and thanks him for the good free food we get 🙂 Anyways, he has been telling me of a couple of really old food joints in one of the core kannadiga-heartlands of Bangalore – Malleswaram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleshwara ). It is where True Bangalore lives. Beautiful, breezy, clean, no pollution. Nice. Anyways, getting back to food, He had mentioned two joints, each famous for different things.

The first was CTR – Central Tiffin Room, aka CTR. Apparently the name board alone has changed to Sree Sagar. Why do I say – apparently? Because the new name board is written fully in Kannada as well. So I would not have realized it either ways. My dear manager friend had given me spot-on directions, to reach the place, and even where to park (opposite side of the road – near the ground periphery – the cops ticket you if you park on the hotel road). But he had not mentioned how big/small it was. If you are going there for the first time, I am pretty sure, you will miss the hotel in the first go (like we did). But ask anyone, they will point you to the hole-in-the-wall entrance.


                                         You will defenitely miss it, if you do not know how to read Kannada.


                                            The worlds best butter masala dosa (benne masala dose).

Once the dosa had been gulped down, it was time to go to the second joint that my manager friend had recommended – Hotel Janata – famous for its Vada Sambar. You need to walk down to eigth cross for this (CTR is in 7th Cross). It is but a 10 minute walk. It is difficult to miss this hotel though. English name board and prominently displayed too.

                                                                              Hotel Janata

                                                             The worlds best vada sambar.

All in all, what started off as a ‘what-the-he**, let us just try these places today’ morning, became a wonderful morning spent on delectable kannadiga good.

*BURP*. I mean *AMEN*, I mean *Thathaasthu* :=)

Interesting Bengaluru

Four in a 2 wheeler … can I come too aunty? [Notice that, with all this, the helmet hangs uselessly at the back of the scooter]

Psychedelic colours on the back of a bus

Remember this road? This peaceful avenue used to be the bustling departure terminal access road for the old HAL airport road. What a difference.

[pictures shot using my Nokia 3110 classic]

Shifted backside, imported crackery and Brocheva revarura …

What do these have in common? All part of a bus ride back home from ITPL 🙂

The shifted backside was not incurred by me, because of the bad road – but happened to be a sign put up by a shopkeeper to indicate that he has vacated his older shop facing the road, and moved to a shop at the back.

The imported crackery was not any drug case busted, but happened to be a sale on airport road, selling plates, spoons and other dinner sets. (I think the owner meant crockery!)

And as for ‘Brocheva‘, the driver had a small AM radio and a speaker above his head, which he had tuned to All India Radio Vividh Bharathi. It has been so long since I listened to this. And yesterday, it was Unni Krishnan crooning to Brocheva in Kamas, and Paluke Bangara mayena in Ananda Bhairavi. The driver was fully into the music. He was tapping his foot, putting thalam on the steering wheel, and was totally enjoying a full-blown music sabha experience. Only that, his driving speed or his rashness did not reduce, because of the mellifluous music.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6FIwW-qWGQ&hl=en]

Incidentally, Paluke is a briilliantly addictive song. I am still humming it.

Deccan chronicle … smrtr ? fastr ? lessr?

(pic: sans serif -> Karnataka Photo News)

Whats up with Deccan chronicle and its stinginess for words. The ads are all over Bangalore. Apparently they use lesser words and more news. And hence they are fastr to read? And you can read the paper fastr? The next thing they will be doing is to write in the new fangled SMS English (or are they already doing that ?). Imagine a serious news being written in that lingo. This is how it would look like.

AIIMS gets doc bk

New Delhi: Centr on Thu suffrd a setbk with the Suprm Crt strkng dn the AIIMS and PIMER(A)A and restrng P. Venugopal as AIIMS Drctr. 🙂

(or)

V will tame infl : PM

PM M.Singh on Thu promisd that the UPA govt led by the Cong would tame infl in coming months and roll back infl rate to reasonable levels. ;-0

Hmm. Cannot imagine reading news like that. Whatever will the austere kaapi drinking I-cannot-see-the-light-of-day-without-reading-Hindu mafia in Chennai do?

Big bazaar and its contribution to police revenue

Well, I am not talking about any direct dealings between the big bazaar group and the police. It may happen, but I am not going to talk about it. It so happened, yesterday, I was waiting out the big bazaar on OMR (old Madras Road) to pick up my sister, who was coming by one of the KSRTC volvos. Well, the bus was running late, but I had preoccupied myself in watching the lonely police officer nearby, and his wonderful antics.
The big bazaar for those in the know is slightly on the wrong side of the road. Instead of proving my ineptitude in geographical descriptions, it is best to show a drawing.

As you can see by the thick red arrows, the easiest way to get to Big Bazaar is the wrong side way. The correct way is to continue down OMR for a little bit, and take a UTurn and come back to big bazaar. And this happened to be the vantage point for our friendly neighbourhood police officer. He would lurk in the shadows for a few minutes, and wait for his prey to come. When the offending motorist came near enough, the officer would pounce on him, and extract ‘his’ collection from him. In the 1 hour I was there, he caught about 11 two wheers, and 3 cars – his collection from each vehicle would have ranged from 50-150 bucks.

When his collection reached a threshold (I am assuming it would have been a round 1000 bucks), he went to this bike, put all his papers etc into the side box, started it, and went on his way …… in the wrong side way ofcourse !!