Andhra Meals and steaming Sizzlers

2 weekends since I left Chennai for Bangalore and life moves on….sometimes I can get crazy and caught on food – this time, the end of my 2 week long stay here- I owe the best memories to Andhra meals from a food court on Infy campus and a veg sizzler from Bombay Blues in Central on M.G road. Basic necessities of life- “food, clothing and shelter”– the three essentials!!! I console myself- being a foodie is not a sin, but gluttony yes!!! And by the way with my tooth and gums returning to normal, I deserve to give a treat to those dead taste buds. My heart says satisfy the taste buds, but mind says it won’t do much good beyond gratifying the tongue :-)

My interaction with Bangalore started on a trip Monday morning to office digesting the traffic on Hosur Road covering a 14 km stretch in 1.5 hrs….and with Bangalore Infy started as the car moved up the spiral parking structure in Electronics City. I normally take a 10 min bus ride to office and see cars parked all over the main road outside the Infy Mangalore office. Struggling with my extra heavy luggage after passing through security check at Gate 6, I checked into the on-campus accommodation at the hostels. After a brief ice-breaker with my room, walked to the IHL area in Bldg 37 right opposite to my room….Shalini came over, picked me up and asked me to occupy a place where some one was on leave…talk about space crunch these days in offices?!! With a Windows 2000 machine that didn’t open Outlook 2003 attachments and a work place with not a phone nor a thrash can, that belonged to someone else, I started work on the good old marketing project (btw, I still don’t have an extension at my desk!). During lunch that day at the Terminal (the new food court) I absorbed and assimilated the Infy campus feeling- which is just over and above stupendous. The Terminal is house to about seven different counters serving Indian to Chinese to Italian to American food, including a pastry shop that baked fresh bread right in front of one’s eyes, a gym, juice point, Microsoft store, Hutch store, Food World, 2 Salons, Strand Book Stall and ICICI bank counter. Right opposite to the Terminal stands a blue pyramid structure surrounded by clear blue water moving to the speed of the breeze- the Media Center. A short walk around the clean, green, crisp campus revealed to me loads of well maintained trees, lawns, palms, water bodies and unique shapely structures where thousands of us banged the keyboards. The building 18 food courts shaped like lotuses not only bring home cost economical home like food and Banana Leaf meals but also serve some rare delicacies like Appam and Bonda soups. In short, the campus offers an excellent ambience for a work place in today’s world- a tranquility that cannot be explained, far from the crowds and woes of a bustling city…and met most of one’s daily material needs.

Last Thursday and Friday, I spent most of my time in an estimation class… mind congested with EIFs, ILFs, DETs, EOs and EQs and all kinds of function point jargon and case studies, I left the class room tired…but the minute I stepped out of the E&R block I started feeling better. There’s a small serene lake right in front of the E&R block…a beautiful green water body, with tiny fishes and little wooden bridges crossing over and a lawn sprawling all around. I sit there for a few minutes and by the time I reach my room, I am relaxed and normal. Certainly there are days I get back with a heavy head and tons of daily operational issues and long running strategic issues both on the work and family front. But the good news is- it takes a short walk across the small and big fountains dancing to various colors, to reach the Terminal for a fresh juice to refresh myself and get ready to move on. I am so in love with this strange stillness and silence around me.

One of these days Ravindra and myself went to the old food court to catch some good rotis and curry…as we were lunching I remarked of the good feelings going through me with this minor move of mine from Mangalore to Bangalore and living on campus for two short months, close to work. As I reached my desk post lunch- I penned this down…“Take each day as it comes, but live it to its fullest and live it to breathe and feel the wind on the face, smiling the smile it brings”.

@Home

I was drenched in sweat when I had completed the previous post….seated on the couch in the large hall of my parents’ house with my t-shirt sticking to my back at 1:00 am with the fan running at a cruel pace. Being in the midst of heat waves and tasting your own sweat doesn’t prove to be a neat experience. Probably this heat is a sign of some upcoming rain and better weather, I promised and consoled myself. But the heat continued and went on and on…for a week almost, through out so many days- it’s not been too pleasant this week, weather apart- owe it to my tooth. 3 days after a dental surgery can be the perfect time to post something…with restricted actions permitted on my mouth and face, and a net connection that boasts 100.mbps (which I don’t believe is the fact), there’s not much I can do right now….and nothing much is happening either. Been feeling a bit “not so nice” about not having written anything in a while….life is going on with the flow of daily activities, in monotony, at a point where you write when the air and wind and water around permit! Been out of office for almost close to 2 weeks at a stretch now, spent more than a month on bench….and that doesn’t feel ok too. Well, well, well- sometimes such things do happen. And there’s one thing that’s best when it doesn’t happen- visit to a dentist! I don’t think you would ever look forward to that…and neither do I! But I was left without an option. An accidental fall when I was 6 has resulted in an episectomy in my upper gums above the two front teeth at the age of 26. It’s crazy, absolutely crazy and scary when such incidents come back and haunt you after 20 long years!! It’s scarier when I read about adverse effects of such surgical procedures and anesthesia in the facial muscles, nerves to which I was liberally subjected to, during the 2 hr process on the dentist’s chair. Right now am keeping my fingers crossed for a complete healing and removal of the 5 sutures this weekend- which also scares me. I recall stories where moms harass little kids with a dental visit for bad behaviour…the truth is it’s worth a story at any age for bad behaviour. Nothing compares to the sight and imagination of those weird and fear inducing tools on the tray of the dentist working in your mouth…!! I was petrified when the nurse was arranging and testing the drills, scalpels and numerous screws for the treatment. Some kind of paranoia was taking over me. And it’s horrifying when the doc comes and injects injection after injection in the name of anesthesia to carry on his excavation duties further. After minutes of drilling and scraping and suctions, he says it’s all over with a smile. And I take a deep breath and actually start breathing…the nurse reassures that it’ll be ok. Still the fear of removal of those sutures was already looming large in front of my eyes. Our brother from church had told me- this experience at the dentist is something you would never want your enemy to go through.

A drop of sweat trickled from my forehead to mouth bringing me back from the dentist’s chair to the couch…I decided to get up and walk up to my room to catch some sleep...felt a sudden gentle wind across my face… looking out of the window I saw drops of rain settling the dust on the earth, and bringing forth a fresh smell…I absorbed the smell, let it go inside and fill me…with the cool breeze on my face and the fresh smell of earth inside me- I felt …and said to myself “Glad am at home through everything”.

Panner, Cocktail and Fries

It was another rainy Saturday afternoon at Mangalore and another of Pramod’s weekend visits. Gosh!! Sometimes I wish this weekend life came to an end overnight- in fact - whatever we wish for happens overnight…!! Shucks am getting into this mode of aimless rambling these days- but that what a weekend life right after marriage and a close to three years long distance relationship can do to you at times. Ok…Coming back to what I started with- after a lazy morning that Saturday we dropped into the “PadmaSri” restaurant at Hotel Srinivas for late lunch at 3:00 pm. Hotel Srinivas is one of the oldest and established places of its kind in good old Mangalore and renown for its decent room and restaurant services. We found a table and quickly placed our order of some appetizers and rice. I just gazed around the room for familiar faces, if any- these days u could bump into an Infoscion anywhere in Mangalore J and noticed a large table of men and women seated in the ratio of 19:7. They seemed like folks from an office, attending a lunch treat hosted by their boss or something…almost all of them were in their late thirties and early forties. The waiters were extremely active and serving them tons of rotis, panner, biriyani and lip smacking spicy food. The women folk were draped in saris, adorned with fair amount of traditional gold jewellery, jasmine flowers- seated and bunched up together on one side of the table and men folk occupied the other significant portion of the table. Bottom-line- they were having a good time- enjoying the food, laughing and cracking jokes having fun on their day out of office.

My mind went back two weeks in time when Pramod and I were at Palkhi with a friend for dinner…again there was a large table of men and women seated in the ratio of some 15:13, (I sometimes have this weird sense of ratios, time and observation…pardon me for the odd ratios!!) mostly friends and probably few from family, celebrating a birthday party. All of them were in mid twenties to early thirties, and most of them- both men and women were sipping cocktails and seated in an almost alternate guy-girl arrangement. The women had straightened hair and fitting clothes, and men t-shirts and trimmed hair. Soon the birthday guy with his wife by his side cut the cake and shared it with folks around him, applauses and shouts and laughs followed. Soon our appetizers arrived and I got reminded of the masala fries we had once eaten at a place called “Cherry’s Square”- this is yet another decent hangout located near St.Agnes to attract the college guys and gals..mostly teens…when I’d been there, a strong “I am two generations older” feeling took over me…especially since I was in an outdated boring blue salwar and had tied my hair into a ponytail … most of the girls had streaked their hair purple or burgundy or red…had fancy bangs and ear, nose, lip piercings….they broke into giggles for everything…not to mention the guys with cool long hair and funky t-shirts and beards. It was a semi open-air atmosphere, with tables for twos or fours only, some cool music playing in the background and had a designer washbasin made out of clear glass cut into the shape of a perfect semi circular sphere…I ordered some pizzas and a delicious hot fudge chocolate sundae after the masala fries. The burgers, pizzas, sandwiches here were tailored to the spicy Indian tongue, and perfectly fit the fast food category fondly addressed as junk by all health freaks! Guys and gals were in groups of two or four, guy and girl in the ratio of 1:1, usually biting into the burgers or digging into sundaes.

I came to reality at some steaming, hot rice placed before me and mentioned to Pramod my string of thoughts. He spoke about his mom and dad…on a fresh morning his dad brings blossomed flowers from their garden and gives it to mom, on days their boys are engrossed in their own worlds the parents go for a regional movie in the theatre near home and have dosa at their favorite place, they take walks at night in the colony park and these parents are in their sixties….we smiled at each other for my funny string of thoughts that jumped from generation to generation..…hasn’t each age group defined leisure in their own terms and drawn lines to enjoy daily life at their own limitations and disposal? It’s beautiful to simply watch this!! As the gap between sexes continues to dwindle with time- a question came to my mind…Are we able to embrace the change from generation to generation?? Or are we even supposed to embrace this change? Should we ignore the change and continue in our boundaries, or explore and taste what the world offers to every new generation?