Thursday, April 24, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Chapter 7 – A Lassi by any other name…..
.....would be called...wait...wait....I’m jumping the gun here. Lets go back to the beginning. As usual this story also involves food but not in as much detail. It all started with just another innocuous dinner. I was about finishing a nice big chole-bhatura and coating my arteries with a fresh layer of cholesterol when I felt like it would be nice to drink something to settle my stomach. I called the waiter over to my table and asked him for a glass of plain buttermilk. He smiled a sweet broken toothed smile, scratched his head and said that he didn’t have any buttermilk. So I then asked him for a bowl of curd to which he replied that he couldn’t do that. Exasperated I told him to forget it, thinking that I would pick up a pack of curd on the way home from some shop. The waiter started to amble away obviously a little anxious at having annoyed a regular customer, one that tips well too.
He took a few steps and turned around and shuffled his way back towards me. I was busy finishing my bhatura, with my head down close to the plate. I caught sight of his slippers and I looked up wondering if he had changed his mind about the curd. He was looking at me a little anxiously fidgeting with the tray in his hand. I nodded my head at him and he stepped closer to me and bent forward. He then asked me a question, which I will come to in a minute, that must have taken a lot of courage and burnt quite a few of the grey cells in his head. Keep in mind that just outside the restaurant is a fruit juice shop where you can get freshly squeezed fruit juices. So he bends sown and barely whispers, “Saar, thayir juice venumma?” (Do you want curd juice?) I was flummoxed, to say the least. What in the name of God was ‘Thayir juice’? The look on my face would have scared any lesser human away but the valiant soul that lingered behind those tattered pants and grimy checkered shirt was not about to give up. He repeated again, “Saar, thayir juice, that they put in a glass with sugar and give you”. Now I have something to say here. If all those great geniuses all through the ages had a light bulb go off somewhere every time they had a great idea (did stoneage man have large fires go off somewhere…is that why there’s none of them left!) then global warming is not really a recent occurrence. Blame those geniuses and their bulbs. If they had only used fluorescent lamps! Anyway…that lamp went off…I got his drift and nodded my head vigorously at which his face beamed with satisfaction and I am sure he was mentally walking down the line of ten grey cells remaining in his head and patting them one by one on the back for a job well done. He brought me back a nice, tall, cool glass of “Sweet Lassi” which I downed with extra satisfaction. I could have missed this delight if it had not been for the quick thinking waiter who managed to understand my need, the constraints, the available resources and put it all together in one delectable “thayir juice”. I tipped that guy extra that day and every day after for the courage it must have taken to come up to me and ask me a stupid (in his own view) question and follow it up with some visionary thinking.
So why am I making a big deal of this. Because just two days earlier I had asked his boss, the manager, for a Lassi and he had given me a rude, “No! We don’t have anything like that here.” Which is why I was asking for buttermilk and curd in the first place and not for a Lassi. In his favor, the uneducated (but divinely gifted) waiter had seized on the opportunity to provide ‘customer service’ in its very intended form and showed that ‘manager’ a thing or two about thinking outside the box.
Lassi is now a featured item on the board outside their restaurant.
He took a few steps and turned around and shuffled his way back towards me. I was busy finishing my bhatura, with my head down close to the plate. I caught sight of his slippers and I looked up wondering if he had changed his mind about the curd. He was looking at me a little anxiously fidgeting with the tray in his hand. I nodded my head at him and he stepped closer to me and bent forward. He then asked me a question, which I will come to in a minute, that must have taken a lot of courage and burnt quite a few of the grey cells in his head. Keep in mind that just outside the restaurant is a fruit juice shop where you can get freshly squeezed fruit juices. So he bends sown and barely whispers, “Saar, thayir juice venumma?” (Do you want curd juice?) I was flummoxed, to say the least. What in the name of God was ‘Thayir juice’? The look on my face would have scared any lesser human away but the valiant soul that lingered behind those tattered pants and grimy checkered shirt was not about to give up. He repeated again, “Saar, thayir juice, that they put in a glass with sugar and give you”. Now I have something to say here. If all those great geniuses all through the ages had a light bulb go off somewhere every time they had a great idea (did stoneage man have large fires go off somewhere…is that why there’s none of them left!) then global warming is not really a recent occurrence. Blame those geniuses and their bulbs. If they had only used fluorescent lamps! Anyway…that lamp went off…I got his drift and nodded my head vigorously at which his face beamed with satisfaction and I am sure he was mentally walking down the line of ten grey cells remaining in his head and patting them one by one on the back for a job well done. He brought me back a nice, tall, cool glass of “Sweet Lassi” which I downed with extra satisfaction. I could have missed this delight if it had not been for the quick thinking waiter who managed to understand my need, the constraints, the available resources and put it all together in one delectable “thayir juice”. I tipped that guy extra that day and every day after for the courage it must have taken to come up to me and ask me a stupid (in his own view) question and follow it up with some visionary thinking.
So why am I making a big deal of this. Because just two days earlier I had asked his boss, the manager, for a Lassi and he had given me a rude, “No! We don’t have anything like that here.” Which is why I was asking for buttermilk and curd in the first place and not for a Lassi. In his favor, the uneducated (but divinely gifted) waiter had seized on the opportunity to provide ‘customer service’ in its very intended form and showed that ‘manager’ a thing or two about thinking outside the box.
Lassi is now a featured item on the board outside their restaurant.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Chapter 6 - Rockfort temple
I climbed all the way to the top of Rockfort. Barely. Along the way an elderly gentleman asked me to get out of his way as I was slowing him down. By elderly I mean he was around when god created man. And by man I actually mean woman (just in case there are some womens lib proponents reading this…in which case…”burn the sports bra!!”)
Apart from the incredible thirty rupees I paid for an “Archanai Thatu” (is that normal?) there were other incredible things…the old pillars, the huge temple sitting atop a few rocks, the cool breeze, the old man who raced past me, and the view of the Cauvery river (dry as a bone) cutting across the landscape like a ugly gash in the earth, oozing trucks and autos and motor bikes crossing the bridge. The actual Pillayar temple is small and sits right at the peak of the hillock and hence his name, “Uchi Pillayar”. Simple. Remember what I said about Indians and their lack of originality. Rough steps hewed into the rock face lead all the way upto it from a lower rest area. The rest area, btw, is where young guys like me lean against the railings trying to act cool, pretending to admire the view, when in reality we were just trying to catch our breath from climbing up so far. The nonchalant hand through the hair is us actually wiping the streams of sweat pouring down the back of our neck. And us lying prone on the ground means call the ambulance!
I enjoyed the mini trip, a good 1.5 hours of walking. Will go back when I decide to practice for the Boston Marathon.
Time for bed. Adieu.
Apart from the incredible thirty rupees I paid for an “Archanai Thatu” (is that normal?) there were other incredible things…the old pillars, the huge temple sitting atop a few rocks, the cool breeze, the old man who raced past me, and the view of the Cauvery river (dry as a bone) cutting across the landscape like a ugly gash in the earth, oozing trucks and autos and motor bikes crossing the bridge. The actual Pillayar temple is small and sits right at the peak of the hillock and hence his name, “Uchi Pillayar”. Simple. Remember what I said about Indians and their lack of originality. Rough steps hewed into the rock face lead all the way upto it from a lower rest area. The rest area, btw, is where young guys like me lean against the railings trying to act cool, pretending to admire the view, when in reality we were just trying to catch our breath from climbing up so far. The nonchalant hand through the hair is us actually wiping the streams of sweat pouring down the back of our neck. And us lying prone on the ground means call the ambulance!
I enjoyed the mini trip, a good 1.5 hours of walking. Will go back when I decide to practice for the Boston Marathon.
Time for bed. Adieu.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Thank you for comments
Thanks to all of you leaving comments. Sowmya, Lalitha aunty, Cheenu...and some weird Hispanic person who i dont understand. If you get a gmail account i can respond to comments but until then i will have to reply like this. Thanks for the encouragement.
Chapter 5 - The one with the push cart
So we come to the push cart. Food as you have seen seems to be playing a central part in my life, off late. Its like sleep…its never a big deal unless your not getting any. So the lack of good home cooked food has made sure that I am on the constant lookout for 1) cheap , 2) healthy and 3) accessible food. And it must include some good vegetables (its just a phase of mine). And I found just the place. At a good 25 minutes walk from my house, this place is at the event horizon of my third condition but its worth every sweat drop oozing out my forehead and every shoe bite on my heel. Not to mention the chaffing in unmentionable places (jeez…I have got to get my mind out of the gutter).
Right opposite the main entrance to the Rock Fort temple is a small bylane filled with hundreds of shops. Congestion is an understatement. Sardines have it good compared to this. Little shops selling everything from clothes to bidhis to jewellery. A mini Mylapore with a hill in the middle. And as the saying goes, if Rockfort cannot go to the restaurant, the restaurant will go to Rockfort. Enter the push carts. Meals on wheels. Cruisin’ Cuisine. The gluttons perambulator.
It all starts with a nice little ritual. The first day my friend took me over there, around 8pm in the evening (only dinner is served), the “Iyer Mama” was just setting up shop. Its appropriately called the “Iyer Kadai”, of course. Hey! Nobody said the Indians were known for their originality! After off-loading all the “andaa’s” and “yelai’s” onto his pushcart from an auto (no cooking is done on the street, its all home cooked), he quickly pulls out a small ‘yelai’, scoops a big helping of “dhadhojanam” (or thayir saadam, curd rice for you uneducated people) onto it, lights incense, sticks it in the middle of the rice and then raises the whole yelai as an offering over his head, saying some prayers, looking towards the temple on top of the hill. That done, he places the yelai in one corner of his push cart. He then pulls out another yelai, heaps it with different food and hands it over to the waiting old beggar on the side. Charity before business. He then wipes his hands on his lungi, turns to his paying customers and says, “Cholunga Saar! Enna Saapudiringe?”
These happen to be the very words that God utters when he welcomes you to Paradise.
A multitude of “variety rices”, uthapams, idli’s, chutneys, sambhars, poriyals, appalams, sweets, and pongals lay bare the quintessentially heart warming nature of South Indian comfort food, that drives thousands of burger and pizza-sick individuals like me from the gold paved streets and milk and honey baths of the western world into the arms of the warm embracing smell of fresh ghee on hot “chakarai pongal”! With due apologies to amma, I must mention that this man makes the best Kesari on this side of the NH-45. He even offers ‘paruppu-podi sadham’, with ‘goju’ on the side. A dollop of this, a scoop of that, a spoonful of ghee and a lot of licking and lip-smacking later, the loaded ‘burp’ that escapes from the deep confines of your stuffed-to-capacity stomach pays the ultimate tribute to the ultimate meal and leaves you yearning for nothing more than a very short trip to a six feet by four feet of space and one pillow. On the side of the road if necessary.
I hope I have given enough incentive to see some of you people down here in Trichy. See you soon.
Right opposite the main entrance to the Rock Fort temple is a small bylane filled with hundreds of shops. Congestion is an understatement. Sardines have it good compared to this. Little shops selling everything from clothes to bidhis to jewellery. A mini Mylapore with a hill in the middle. And as the saying goes, if Rockfort cannot go to the restaurant, the restaurant will go to Rockfort. Enter the push carts. Meals on wheels. Cruisin’ Cuisine. The gluttons perambulator.
It all starts with a nice little ritual. The first day my friend took me over there, around 8pm in the evening (only dinner is served), the “Iyer Mama” was just setting up shop. Its appropriately called the “Iyer Kadai”, of course. Hey! Nobody said the Indians were known for their originality! After off-loading all the “andaa’s” and “yelai’s” onto his pushcart from an auto (no cooking is done on the street, its all home cooked), he quickly pulls out a small ‘yelai’, scoops a big helping of “dhadhojanam” (or thayir saadam, curd rice for you uneducated people) onto it, lights incense, sticks it in the middle of the rice and then raises the whole yelai as an offering over his head, saying some prayers, looking towards the temple on top of the hill. That done, he places the yelai in one corner of his push cart. He then pulls out another yelai, heaps it with different food and hands it over to the waiting old beggar on the side. Charity before business. He then wipes his hands on his lungi, turns to his paying customers and says, “Cholunga Saar! Enna Saapudiringe?”
These happen to be the very words that God utters when he welcomes you to Paradise.
A multitude of “variety rices”, uthapams, idli’s, chutneys, sambhars, poriyals, appalams, sweets, and pongals lay bare the quintessentially heart warming nature of South Indian comfort food, that drives thousands of burger and pizza-sick individuals like me from the gold paved streets and milk and honey baths of the western world into the arms of the warm embracing smell of fresh ghee on hot “chakarai pongal”! With due apologies to amma, I must mention that this man makes the best Kesari on this side of the NH-45. He even offers ‘paruppu-podi sadham’, with ‘goju’ on the side. A dollop of this, a scoop of that, a spoonful of ghee and a lot of licking and lip-smacking later, the loaded ‘burp’ that escapes from the deep confines of your stuffed-to-capacity stomach pays the ultimate tribute to the ultimate meal and leaves you yearning for nothing more than a very short trip to a six feet by four feet of space and one pillow. On the side of the road if necessary.
I hope I have given enough incentive to see some of you people down here in Trichy. See you soon.
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