Masala Dosa - CTR

Seems like quite a few people are missing the dosa on my homepage. Many of them have asked what happened to it. Well..it's days were numbered....One of the monkeys I know ate it. (I suspect Shruthi), she always likes eating masala dosa's. One of the favorite place of that monkey is CTR. (Central Tiffin Room), now known as something else I cant remember (Oh! Google informs me that it;s now SriSagar, but I'll still call it what I want). So today I will subject you all to a review of CTR which meets the high standard of my refined culinary masala dosa tastes.

Location: No 154, Margosa Road, 7th cross, Malleshwaram, Bangalore.
Decor: Has chairs and tables and a 'family room'. That alone qualifies it for a 3 star dosa joint.
Ambiance: Eh? yen ri haagandare?
Price: Affordability is their first name.

CTR has the look of the typical old joints which have been around since our parents can remember and looks it. There are always people standing outside waiting to get in. The smell is mouth watering. Once you get a place, point to note: You will almost never get a table to yourself, unless you are a large group you are always made to sit in the nearest available chairs. The place itself is not too big. With a set of mismatched chairs and tables and abuzz with activity and noise. The waiters arrive promptly. Unless you ask them to tell you the menu, they will assume you want the dosa.

The benne (butter) masala dosa arrives almost immediately, the waiting time is probably 30 secs to a min. The dosa is crisp and roasted to the right consistency. The chutney is coconutey and really tasty. I could just eat chutney. The potato curry is a little less for me but it is enough for the dosa. The spice is a little less when compared to other places, so it is favored by most. The sambhar is very good too. Left to me, I'd sit and savour it, but the place is so full that you are expected to finish quickly and leave. A coffee after the dosa is a perfect finish. The coffee there is excellent. Right kind of filter coffee. The aroma reminds me of rainy days and hot filter coffee at home. After the meal, all you want to do is go and vegetate at home. It is deliciously filling.

In all, a great place for a good benne masala dose and good old filter kapi. It is a very popular breakfast place over the weekends and can get very crowded. So getting there early is suggested. Be warned: they really do close after 11.30 am. They open again by evening and stay open up to 9.30 or so. It's a lovely place. With it's old world charm, simple people, prompt service and tasty food. So if you are in that neighbourhood, do stop by at this place. You will not be disappointed.

In conclusion, Shruthi now owes me a dosa as she ate mine. What say shrutha? :)

Back!

oooook..been a long time...a whole 3 and almost half months. It sounds cliched, but I honestly did not have time to think and I have been a victim of writers block..It's a serious disease for writers or for people who have been looking at excel sheets and ppt's for a long time. I have been looking at a lot of the latter two in the recent past. So I have been afflicted with stage 3 of the disease..The good news is that it gets better from now, the bad being there will be a lot of poor jokes and innuendo's which will follow..So all the best. An update on what I was upto these last few days.

- Ranted against the HR. Annoying useless set of people . Stopped for the time being as it got monotonous (truth being I ran out of really nasty things to say)
- The Americans came. So had a busy week.
- Played the Wii - Like the PS3..anyday.
- Learnt how to bake a cake...honestly..can bake a mean chocolate cake. Am obsessed with it now. (ah! probably should'nt have given that bit of information out)
- Cut my hair...real short...cant decide whether I like how the look or not. Sometimes I do, sometimes I dont, but most days I do.. :) I am a Rock Star.
- Still hate congress and their shameless vote bank and caste politics. They are like rabid dogs sniffing a target.
- Markets are so boring that they can put a hard boiled insomniac to a sound sleep.
- Probably will not watch Slumdog Millionaire till they stop playing Jai Ho..
- Feel that Rajdeep Sardesai needs to be transferred to Al- Jazeera or PTV at the rate at which he is obsessively covering Pakistan politics and screaming down at all of us.
- Feel that Rehman has composed far greater music than the Jai Ho thingie..his jingle for Garden (the sarees) was better than Jai Ho.

The writers block refuses to budge...But it will..and it shall and it will..till then..Jai Ho...

Of Journeys made and forgotten

I was just speaking to a friend and she reminded me of a trip we took a while back.I think it was August 2003, or later, or earlier. But mostly around that time. The time before I earned enough to get myself a digital camera. It was around this time that we, Deepthi, Archana, Rashmi, Shwetha and I set off to Deepthi's grandmother's house in K R Nagar. It is about an hour away from Mysore. We had the nicest time .Some moments are clear as crystal and some I cannot seem to remember.I will put down what I remember of those 3 days.

  We set off nice and early one morning, before 6, the train was at 6.30 am . Still sleepy and bleary eyed. The train started moving and in a few minutes, the sun started streaming in and we woke up. Well, what happenes when a bunch of girls get together and are awake and are on a journey. They talk. So we did.A lot.We laughed a lot too.loudly.I'm sure we were quite a nuisance. But hey, who cared, I love train journeys and had good company.

    The next hing I remember is that we got down at Mysore and there was a car to pick us up. The next thing we know is the car has broken down a good 20kms from our destination and there is no bus stop or any other mode of transport. We hitched a ride from a old couple who were charming and kind. We reached and the house was a one storied building, it had large rooms and was where extra rooms are added as the family grows. They had a coconut farm and large fields. I remember being fed a lot of breakfast because I was 'thin' and underfed. Well, I'm a lousy eater and I hate eating a lot. They only stopped because I looked like I would cry.

   We then hung around and spoke to her grandparents. Really nice and simple people.She also had a great - grandmother who I remember was really active at 88. We went for long walks, drank coconut water, ate lunch, slept, had dinner, played a game called 'chowkabara' till some wee hours in the morning.

   This cycle repeated for the next day, except we went to the town square and had some more stuff to eat.  I remember eating a lot during this trip. I loved the coconut groves. We hung out there, walked through sugarcane farms, ate fresh sugarcane. The sweetest I have tasted in a while. The trees looked greener, the hibiscus healthier, the air sweeter and cleaner. We walked a lot, spoke a lot (yeah yeah...i know...this is different). Were happier. Had good food. Played some long forgotten games. Tried some home made beauty products. Generally lazed around and had a great time. We visited an old temple. Lovely place, next to Cauvery and heard some legend about how one cannot hear the gusinh water because lord Rama cursed the river because the river was deafening. You really cannot hear the water inside, even if it is like a few feet away. Had a picnic too. We came back in an almost empty train and made even more noise. Found another bunch who were travelling to Bangalore and created enough din for the few remaining passengers to give up trying to sleep.

   Why am I reminiscing, is because I just want to remember the good times we had. Now that all of us have our own lives, work pressures, families. We had a darned good time. We need to remember and not push it to the recesses like a Business Law chapter (man!...THAT used to be boring). 

    

Scribd

Yup, I know. I do actually mean scribbling. I'm going for the searchability of the keyword here. Anyway, today are random thoughts that I that flit through my mind on a quiet morning. Read Megi's blog today. She's gone from ballistic to buffonery in a rapid blink of an eyelid. This time her phase lasted long enough. What to say..cartoons will be cartoons. So today I travelled from seshadripuram. Need to traverse through the (in) famous MG Road while getting to work (no rambling about good old days...promise) .I saw that people have learnt to adjust.Swalpa adjust maadi. There was no unnecessary honking, no frustrated faces, no flared tempers, no road rage. Might be the early morning factor. Yet, I travelled by these very roads 6-7 months back and the scenario was very different. People lost tempers at even 8.15 in the morning. There used to be a honking match.Mine's louder than yours. One arrived to work after waging a war on the streets. people still do. It's no better. Maybe it was just today, an off day.But I arrived to work feeling fresh, the 45 minute of travel did not leave me feeling homicidal. 

        One does not need chirping birds, bright days and empty streets, a morning without someone cutting you off in the front while driving, or without a maniac who wants to go fast even in bumper to bumper traffic is enough. See, not greedy, just practical. Traffic's the bane of Bangalore. It is the bane of most developing cities. Since Bangalore lacks a good public transport system, traffic woes are more acutely felt. I sincerely hope atleast my grandchildren get to use the Namma Metro (from the looks of it...that's my estimate on how long it may take). So I sat in the auto today and reflected on how nice it'd be in Mysore or Chickmaglur. Hmmm....that's a thought...now if I can convince my office and Texas Instruments to shift to either of the places, I'll be a happy woman.

             

Bangalore - A day to remember

July 25th. A day people of Bangalore will not forget in a hurry. Ok, maybe it's too early to write, but write I will, I need to put down what I feel before I forget the feeling altogether. So here goes..
Mid- afternoon...about 2:45 pm, someone in the office declares that there have been serial blasts in the city. Not much reaction is garnered at this announcement. Largely because such things people tell and the rumors spread and it's all a great big hoax. But this announcement was immediately followed by another colleague in the office saying that there have been blasts. Google's put into use immediately. Google shockingly throws up results in news channel websites flashing the news " Flash news : Blasts rock Bangalore ". First reaction is of complete disbelief and then denial. Bangalore??? Namma (my) Bangalore, come on, not possible. Then reality sinks in. It has to be true. Rumors run wild., all the localities are mentioned as places of the blasts. Panic sets in. People call their friends, parents, spouses, children to see if they're fine. Phone lines are jammed. Interenet helps.Long live Gtalk, Yahoo chat, MSn which helped peple get in touch (HINT: Dont block them ;)). More news trickles down, live videos are watched, things get a little less panicky. 7 blasts are confirmed, casuality :1- Lakshmi, injured: reports vary. Low intensity blasts. people sigh in relief and helplessness and propably in fear and get back to what they were doing.Companies ask their employees not to panic, Roads are jammed and everyone's in a daze.
Who'd have done it? At the time of this posting, noone has owned up to it and the police are still looking. Some say it's a warning of what these people are capable of. Some say, it's more local and related to the local government coming to power.Some say terrorists. Some say law and order problem. Whatever it turns out to be in the end, The incident has shaken Bangaloreans. Very much. Because such things happen to other people, not us. And now we are the "other people". What a tag. What a way to make a point.
After all this, life goes on.