B&C of Old

We live in the times of JFM…not JFK. JFM is not the name of another US President but January, February and March. You board any flight and you are bound to find twenty to thirty insurance executives travelling zig-zag across the length and the breadth of the country. They all look alike with the laptop bag hanging from one shoulder and the phone held against one ear as the fellow keeps talking, trying to convince others why they should buy his product, why his pricing is better and what more the customer can gain by signing up. I have been doing this year after year and this is truly a ritual we perform. People at home think we are doing some great work, the staff at work think the bosses are terribly busy and yet we ourselves don’t know what good this is serving other than consoling oneself, if the results are not to the expectations, that I tried my best…I really did. And when it works, it feels good to have a bumper start to the next financial year.

Mind it, this ritual is not much fun. The alarm goes off at 4am and by 4.30am you are desperately trying to get an Uber to the airport where you find yourself facing a serpentine queue just to enter and the CISF person is taking time to look carefully at the old Aadhar card with the picture half obliterated and trying to match it with your sad and sleepy face. Reluctantly, he lets you go. Saved… no...wait . There’s a bigger queue ahead….the security check where the line, looking like the tail of the serpent, just becomes so much longer. And just when you think you have put the electronics and your over-nighter in two separate trays on the security belt and you attempt walking through the arch for the final body scan, the light blinks and the CISF man asks you to take off your shoes and put them in another tray as if you are entering the so called temple of modern India.  If you are lucky and have time at hand, it is time you want to use one of your multiple cards that entitle you to enter a lounge but bad luck seems to follow you as the card reader may not be working there. On days that it works, you promise yourself that you will only have fruits and tea but end up eating everything from humus to idli, from parantha to poha and masala chai. For the regular traveller, this is a danger zone and the first morning step to adding tyres to your belly and if you repeat the routine on your way back at the destination airport, you just might have eight pack belly which even the Pathaan on the screen does not have.

I am a pirate at heart, not because I do marine insurance, but I find some good in going from place to place and finding myself some interesting places to see and eat. While I may at times get to live in hotels that claim to be heritage and grand, to me these small old places tucked away in the old towns are the real heritages that we should preserve and visit. I start my search well in advance on Google….Best old places to eat…. and options pour out. Behind my boarding pass, I carefully start writing down a few names and as I meet my local colleagues, I throw some of these names at them just to get their reaction. In most cases, they seem to add to the wow quotient to what I had already read on the internet but are not so enthusiastic about the rest which I knock off from my ‘To Go to List’. Somehow, I even manipulate and convince the local colleagues to plan the business visit in a manner that they take me close to one of the fascinating joints where I go for my afternoon lunch…. Official Team Lunch of course. When it comes to dinner, I ward off people saying I have a lot to do and then select another good old place for making most of the night. Here I give you some such wonderful eating places in Chennai and Bangalore, two cities I recently travelled on ‘business.’

No visit to Chennai is complete without a visit to Murugan Idli. Opened in 1993, Murugan Idli Shop now has multiple outlets in the city but I love going to the original one on Usman Road, T Nagar. The website says that it “is a casual dining restaurant, offering South Indian cuisines and warm hospitality in a rustichistorically preserved places.” No dictionary will even find you such a word but surely this punched word brings out the essence of the place…rustic and historical. Rustic because you get no cutlery here. Just use your hands and slurp it in from the banana leaf placed before you! Historical for reasons I guess is that idli is the most famous breakfast food across the globe and it all started here in Chennai. Anyway, the moment you sit and order food which all seem to know what to ask for… four kinds of chutneys of coconut, coriander, tomato and mint are placed on the banana leaf. The chutneys are all made fresh, almost every hour, and the flavours are so distinct that you may end up eating them even before the meal has arrived. The idli is their signature dish and it is as soft as the baby’s bottom… soft, smooth and fluffy. The podi idli soaked with ghee is my personal favourite and the onion uthapa comes a close second. Getting a place here can be a challenge and so a little waiting time should be kept in reserve when planning a visit. I wanted to pick up a packed bottle of the spicy gunpowder (podi) but was told by the man selling that it will not be allowed in my hand luggage. I even checked with my friend in the city who happens to be the CISF Big Boss there and he promptly sent me the airlines list of things prohibited and it included this gunpowder. I did not have to ask the reason. Any idiot who wanted to create havoc in mid- air could open the seal and fling the gun powder in the eyes of passengers and crew and then take over Airforce One. The best part about Murugan is that it does not pinch your pocket one bit. Don’t waste your corporate credit card here…just pay cash and walk out or you may have to explain to your finance and personnel departments about the cheap, shady places you have been eating in.

If the day belonged to Top Gun Murugan, the night was pure masahari delight at Buhari on Mount Road. This place is a landmark in the culinary landscape of the city of Chennai for this is the place where the famous Chicken 65 originated. It was established in 1951 by A.M. Buhari who was the former Sheriff of Madras. I looked at the menu card and was inclined to reach for the famous Buhari Dum Biriyani but the waiter suggested trying something else. My next request was for the Ceylon Egg Parotta which is parantha with egg, onion and mutton pressed inside as filling. The fellow asked me to go by his choice and I agreed….iddiappam with paya and I had one of the best dinners for a long time. Even though there were five iddiappams, which are rice flour pressed into noodles and packed together, and the bowl of paya was huge, I licked the last bit of gravy and cleaned up the plate that possibly did not need a wash before being served to another customer. Next my friendly advisor asked me to top this meal with a cuppa Irani Chai…so milky, so sweet and with a distinct masala taste that made you wide awake and happy. All of this at less than five hundred bucks was a steal. Before leaving Buhari’s I insisted on seeing the Chicken 65 and Samsa (small samosa with chicken/mutton) just to see what these delicacies looked like. Chicken 65 is a deep-fried chicken dish with telltale red colouring. I was told that famous personalities like Raj Kapoor, Sivaji Ganesan and Sridevi would visit the place often.

Chicken 65

Off to Bengaluru the following week and the two afternoon lunches were at Sri Raghavendra Stores and Konark. At the Sri Raghavendra Bhavan at Chickpet, we had Rawa Idli, Dahi Vada with a sprinkling of boondi on top and Kesari Bhaat…. I just love this sweet dish which I never miss when in this city since I first visited with my family in 1996. One of my colleagues had puri-sabzi where the puri resembled bhaturas of North India. All this plus a round of wonderful filter coffee for less than four hundred rupees. This makes the food taste even better for a plate of idli ,at the hotel where I was putting up, would have cost me much more. Next afternoon, I had the best Ghee Masala Dosa ever at Konark Veg Restaurant at the stadium. I have had masala dosas at many places all over the country but this was truly special.

My other visit to an old and iconic place in Bangalore was at Koshy’s Parade Café at St. Mark’s Road. Koshy’s started in 1940 when P.Oomen Koshy opened a bakery in the Cantonment area and baked the traditional English bread for the garrisons. Later, he moved to a plot behind the cathedral and in 1952 opened Parade Café. Koshy’s became the first airconditioned restaurant in South India with a live band and dance floor. The menu is exhaustive with 968 items covering Kerala dishes to Anglo- Indian and continental fare. I enjoyed my dinner at the Jewel Box Café which I understand is pricier and is airconditioned. We had a round of sweet corn soup with pepper chicken as starters and the main course of butter chicken and tandoori roti was marvellous. The butter chicken was not the usual tomato sauce sprinkled gravy but had a distinct flavour of its own. The people serving here seem to be as old as the Café itself but they treat you well and the ambience is lovely. This is the place that has hosted Queen Elizabeth II, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khushchev and many more. The place is usually frequented by the so called old timers most of whom have grown old with the restaurant. Some of these old timers are touchy about the place where they sit almost every time they come in. Read it somewhere that a politician once told the present generation owner that, “I have met your grandfather and father and seen you as a kid. I have travelled across the globe looking for peace and quiet and this is the only place I find it.”

The Jewel Box Cafe

How can I be a pirate and not talk of ale? So this one is not from the Old B&C, I mean Bangalore and Chennai, but closer home at a suburb of Mumbai where one of my office colleagues lives with his extended close knit family. Someone on his wife’s side recently passed away… off ho gayi in Mumbaikar’s lingo- and my colleague took a few days off. Mind it, both off in the last sentences mean different things! When he returned to work he told me of a local custom which, if Kalpana Lajmi were alive, she would have turned into her second movie on the aftermath of death, the first being Rudali, where we first got to see professional mourners of Rajasthan. Here, in this hamlet near Mumbai, it seems, the close family members plan a couple of sessions of hard drinking for the immediate family folks who have lost a soul in order to lessen their grief. Sessions are held age wise and some close relatives take charge of arranging each of the grief parties to help uplift the ‘spirits’ of the sad ones. Another colleague of ours who too loves his evening drink with friends listening to this tale remarked, “Hey, I too am very sad at your loss. Please invite me to one such session”.

Remarkable India…. Truly Incredible.

SS