Read my article on Chennaionline: The Tambura

It is fun walking through Pikes Place Market in Seattle.

Seattle is a great place in spring, especially on a sunny day.

The hills, the evergreens, the blue skies, abundant water, snow clad mountain ranges and peaks at a distance, flowers in bloom, what more can you ask for.

Add to it the variety of food that you encounter. Pizza at an Italian store laden with the choicest ingredients and various grades of olive oil, along with the Italian MTR’s instant version of creme brulee and other dessert goodies. Another Italian eatery with enticing pasta lining the counter. A crepe place, several coffee places and more and more.

All in the midst of a fish market where the subdued smell of fish contrasts with the smell of fresh flowers from a flower vendor, where the natural flowers look so fresh and full of life that I thought they were artificial.

The water is not far off and the cool breeze and the warm sun straddle you to create Vairamuthu’s Chandralekha effect (konjam nilavu – konjam neruppu!).

Street singers and musicians enliven their place as well.

Definitely a place to visit!

Well, swine flu is in the news.  Here is a video clip probing into animal farms that may be the cause for this outbreak. When there is a scare of a pandemic, all eyes focus on the disease.

How did this disease become a pandemic?

Did it originate in a pig farm?

Why did Egypt have to slaughter 350,000 pigs? Wow! Getting rid of 350,000 living things in one stroke would be disturbing probably even to sworn PETA antagonists, leave alone everyone else. First of all, are there that many pigs in a single country? Are that many pigs eaten? If 350,000 in Egypt, then how many in the USA? Europe? China?

I guess they are not really farm animals anymore, because they are the ones being ‘farmed’, like crops. Mass produced. Mass stored. Mass sprayed. And more.

Here is a Youtube video – a CNN news report that speculates on the cause of the pandemic and its possible relationship with the animal mass-farming culture of today.

Let us not make a judgement on mass animal farming.  Let us just be aware that animal farming exiss today on a mass scale  and is a link in the vast web of  commerce in today’s global world. It would be interesting to look at the size of today’s pork market and to see how it has grown since the dawn of mass-pig-farming.

The strongminded may venture to watch www.meetyourmeat.com . (Viewer discretion is advised).

The Malls of Chennai

It is a different world in there.

In contrast to the dust and the heat and the traffic, the malls of Chennai offer a completely different flavor and taste of Chennai.

City Center Mall, hardly in the center of the city (it is actually close to the coastline) stands out on Radha Krishnan Salai. Although self contained with a parking facility, parking does become a hassle when the facility is full.

The building is impressive from the outside and once you get in, it is the world of 21st century commerce all through.

A fine assembly of brand names and glitzy stores. Of course. What else would a shopping mall contain?

Then there is coffee being served, sorry sold. Espresso. Masala chai etc. The sorry part is that in keeping with 21st century mall tradition, coffee gets brewed in a machine; probably with freeze dried milk and processed instant coffee, with a power run device that generates the froth (nurai). All served in a disposable cup. For a sticker price of Rs 40 I think. Wow! The native coffee that used to be served, and is still served in Udupi ‘hotels’ is still a trademark of Chennai tiffin and it has a taste that cannot be imitated by this machine coffee, how many ever times it is brewed.

Similarly, the ‘chai’ brewed here is also not my cup of tea.

Then there is a cookie place. I was enamored by the variety of cookies. Creative names. There was even a pineapple cookie.  It had a piece of pineapple, and some dates as well. These days, anything you fancy goes into a cookie. Nuts, seasame seeds (verum yellu), dried fruits, cinnamon, ginger, you name it. (Even the packaged biscuits come advertised with cashew nuts, they play ‘hide’ with you, what with the miniscule quantity of these nuts, you cant even seek them).

The cleanliness in the mall is striking. So is the noise level. Lots of people, lots of young people.  Happy people. People in relationships. People in search of relationships. Lots and lots.

There is entertainment as well. Mall-cinema. All the latest films are on. I sat through part of vaaranam aayiram.

On top of it all, there is foodcourt.  Pretty decent fare. Most malls these days have the US based ‘Subway’ with the smell of baking bread that actually flaunts their advertisement that their bread is baked fresh there. I passed. Not Subway in India. Then there is all kinds of other restaurant representation.  Tiffin, North Indian, South Indian, Chinese, Chettinadu, Corn in a cup.  And more..

But, nothing to beat the food spread at the Forum Mall in Bangalore. More on that later.

There was an uninvited guest at our house. A rodent. A mouse. An eli. 

There is a feeling of accomplishment when a mouse gets caught in a trap.

I didnt know that mice could inhabit modern apartment buildings.

We had dealt with mice and mousetraps during our childhood days in the townhomes in old Madras.

So, this time in an apartment, we were kind of surprised when my mother said that she suspected there was a mouse in the household that had snacked on the rice flour used for the kolam (i.e. the decorative geometric patterns drawn in front of the home shrine).

Out came the mouse trap.

A piece of coconut was dabbed with ghee and warmed up. Yum!

Wait! That was not for the family members.

It was the bait for the mouse. A gourmet bait fit for the king of mice.

That night all cabinets were carefully closed.

At around 2 AM I heard a thud, as I woke up from sleep.

What was that?

Ah! It must be the mouse.

And sure enough, the intruder was caught.

Neverthless, there was much  excitement at home the following day. A few phone calls to let people know that the mouse had been caught.

Our children (NRIs) of course, crooned over ‘the poor mouse’ the following day.

One of them even suggested that we leave a bowl of water for the ‘poor thing’.  Aha, she could put peta volunteers to shame with her kindness for the rodent.

The rodent was finally set free in a distant dump and that was the end of our encounter with this unwanted visitor.

Multi colored chutneys and sambar in silver cups at Saravana Bhavan

Silver plates come with a price.

The same dish served at an airconditioned deluxe Saravana Bhavan comes at a premium.

The difference of course is the decor and the ambience.

The next level of difference is in the plates and cups.

When you order the dosai, you are first presented with a silver plate with six silver cups, filled with five different chutneys and a sambar.

Then comes the dosai in another plate.

The whopping bill comes in another silver plate. Credit cards are accepted.

Come on! Give me a break. (Watch this video)

See how this simple Indian exercise has suddenly been “discovered” and re-christened ’superbrain yoga’.

I have been doing this simple toppukkaraNam since my childhood.

It is a tamil word. I dont know what toppu means. But karaNam is a pose. Everyone does it in India. I have heard that the traditional mild knocks that you give on your temples with your fist as a part of prayers to Ganesha, is a stimulant, much like acupressure (according to my perippa i.e. my father’s older brother). My parents and grandparents have also told us that the gesture of pulling one’s ears and performing the toppukkaranam has a similar effect.

Now, all of a sudden it is superbrain yoga. They even have detailed explanations for this, a website, patient instruction, case-studies and illustrations where a C grader became a ‘different person’ thanks to superbrain yoga.

See this video for yourself.

Saravana Bhavan Place Mat

The Saravana Bhavan saga continues. Today we visit the T Nagar Saravana Bhavan on Tyagaraja Salai.

I had been to this place on more than one occasion during the last trip.

During the first trip, my daughter ordered pao bhaji which turned out to be excellent.

I ordered aappam with cauliflower chops. For those not familiar with this dish (remember aappakkada annakkili – the song from the rajini starrer paayum puli), aappam is a white crepe made of a batter with rice flour, puffed rice and coconut milk. It is cooked fat free and is literally steamed. The center is soft and fluffy, the edges are thinner and the entire dish comes out looking like a dish. The hot cauliflower chops go very well with the aappam.

I also tried their kanchipuram iddlies. Not bad again.

My luck with the Saravana Bhavan group of hotels was good this time; I have heard reports from fellow readers that this quality may not be  consistent.

This particular location in T Nagar  I believe serves you a buffet by weight and also a gujarati thali. I had tasted the Saravana gujarati thali in 2007 and was not very impressed.  The saravana gujarati combo does not fly as well as the gurjari raga kritis in karnatic music!

Dosai - perfect proportion (Reduced portion though)

I was introduced to Saravanabhavan – Parrys Corner in 1990 or 1989 I think as a hotel that served you colorful chutneys and a dosai whose quality was superior to the Udupi hotels in Parry’s corner that I was used to.

Almost twenty years later, I perceive the same quality and taste and cleanliness although the prices have gone up dramatically and serving sizes have come down.

First:  One of my favorites is the kaara dosai aka Mysore Masala Dosai (I respect this dosai and hence the uppercase lettering). This particular breed of dosais has a chilli powder paste applied to its interior and it comes either folded with masala in it, or it comes rolled in the form of a neat cone.

Obviously the geometric measurements have been done by the establishment to ensure that the rim of the cone fits into the area covered by the plate.  If you look carefully you will see the various concentric tiers on the dosai with progressively decreasing radii much like a gopuram.  If such a dosai was French, its vertex would probably have been decorated with a cherry or a buch of parsley.

Kaara dosai is off the menu at several Saravana Bhavans; but I found it served at the Annanagar Saravana Bhavan. I went upstairs on a Sunday afternoon to beat the crowd downstairs. But the first floor was equally crowded. It was the last half an hour of the daily lunch time.

I finally found a table that I had to share with a couple.  The couple seemed lost to the surroundings and were submerged in their own world as they ordered plate meals and devoured it.

I asked for Mysore Masala Dosai. The waiter corrected me and took an order of kaara dosai. I was promised a wait of 15 minutes.

To my delight, the dosai arrived in less than 10 minutes. (What efficiency!)

A white non-metallic plate with compartments.

Each compartment filled with a colored chutney. White, green, red and off white. And then one of the compartments was filled with sambar. And the dosai.

For an NRI that  lives in the Midwestern United States, and is served ‘dosaas’ in ‘udoopi’ ‘restaurants’, the Madras Saravana Bhavan dosai was heavenly and so were each of the chutneys.

I made the dosai last for a long time as I really enjoyed every bite of it.

Then I asked for tea, that was served in a glass cup with a saucer. You could refer to the tea as ‘tea payasam’ as it was made with creamy milk and was very rich.

The bill was cleared in no time and I walked out, a content person – into the busy thoroughfare of one of Annanagar’s main roads.

The paste on the inner side of the dosai makes a difference. So does the filling inside a pOLi – particularly the pudina pOLi or the masala pOLi, the southern avatar of the paratha. More on these in another post. There is still much to share about Saravana Bhavan.

Amidst all the hype about the Oscar award for Jai Ho, we listened to pukaar after a long time.

It must have been a few years since we listened to the songs in pukar.

The song kismat se ham is just awesome.

Strains of bhimpalasi run throughout the song barring the repeated (and intended) use of an alien phrase using the komal dha.

The femaile singer is Anuradha Paudwal  ( Thank you Ramesh for the comment)** The male voice is Sonu Nigam.  Anuradha Paudwal’s voice sound really fresh and crisp.  Sonu Nigam’s voice comes out really well in this song.

The song is rendered by both of them with a lot of grace. The highest note dha (above the sa) and the lowest note pa below the sa are rendered with equal power. Nigam’s voice has been recorded exceptionally well.

There is a briskness that carries the melody very effectively and you are left craving for more at the end.

The other good song in the movie ishvar ya allah – ye pukar sun le rendered by Lata Mangeshkar and a chorus of children is a very nice melody as well.