kosambari

The “laidback attitude” of the Kannadiga is a familiar if patronising lament of all those who have come here from elsewhere, more so of those of our own who have seen a bit of the world. In Beantown Boomtown, the just-released anthology on Bangalore, the writer Jayant Kaikini, who  came from Bombay in 2000, does just that in a chapter aptly titled Extra Sambaar:

“The city’s ‘complacency’ and the ‘poverty of dreams’ was in particular disconcerting. Ask the Bangalorean, “I believe some spaceship  carrying aliens has landed outside town. Shall we go and watch?” or “A new dosa camp has come up in 5th Cross, let’s go and try it out!” and his option is crystal clear. “Does he serve extra sambaar? Extra chutney?” he’ll exclaim and rush towards the eating joint.

“Even if he is served a litre of sambaar with the first round, he’ll finish it with a single idli and then elbowing his way through the crowd of customers like Superman, he’ll dash to the counter for a second helping of the saucy broth. Such is the application of this sambaar-lover!”

Whether the circumspection over rumours of a spaceship landing in town isn’t logical in the original science city which is now the technology capital, is not a question that Kaikini has time for, but he quickly delves into and demolishes that other great Bangalore discovery: the darshini.

“If you rest on the granite benches of the elegantly-designed colourful bus-stops beside the road, you can watch the darshinis (veggie fast food joints) that are about to gobble up the pavements in front of them, for hours on end.

“All things in those eating places appear like miniature paintings. Round mini tables bearing mini coffee lotas and a mini washbasin—all looking like children’s toys. The families crowded there too are in a bit of jumble, just the way children are when they play family games.

“At these darshinis, you can see how a well-knit family could slip into disintegration. While the women wait in frightful joy, men bring from Kanakana-kindi like counters, plates heaped with snacks, carrying a la Lord Hanuman, the Sanjeevani mountain itself.

“No sooner do the plates arrive than the family splits itself. Its members scatter in different directions—each one goes and stands at a separate point attending her dish. Had they got a single table, they would have perhaps at least physically stood together.

“At one corner stands the head of the family, the male creature, lost in the heroic excitement of eating after severing links with this world and gazing into the space outside, somewhere beyond the buses plying on the road.

“As the daughter-in-law begins to explain what paneer is, the mother-in-law feels slighted and mutters, “I know, I know…” and turns suddenly to gaze at another disintegrated family nearby, all the while chewing her snack.

“And so, a dozen families, like pieces of a jigsaw, nod their heads and raise their brows in appreciation of the dishes and say, even before they’ve tasted it, “Hmm, good preparation. Nice, very nice!”

(Beantown Boomtown, compiled by Jayanth Kodkani and R Edwin Sudhir, published by Rupa, 2007)

T.S. SATYAN writes: Like an unhurried hiker, I walked through the streets of Mysore which had been washed by a light rain the previous night.

My eyes feasted on the enchanting carpets of fallen flowers–the yellow tabebuia, purple jacaranda, pink and white acacia, besides other blooms.

The air was rich with the fragrance of floral bounty, accentuated by the aroma of jasmine and sampige wafting from homes which also had bushes of croton, a guava tree and a coconut palm.

I could hear girls playing on the harmonium as they practised their music lessons while their mothers were busy washing the house-fronts with cow dung and decorating them with eye-catching rangoli designs.

Breakfast was already cooking in some homes and I could smell the oggarane––a seasoning of dried chilli and mustard seeds fried in oil, an essential ingredient of Mysore cuisine.

Small groups of people, some wearing the traditional Mysore turban, were enjoying their morning walk. I followed one which was heading for my favourite restaurant in town.

For many decades, its proprietor refrained from naming his establishment which became better known as ‘Nameless’, whose speciality continued to be the “set” which I ordered for myself.

The “set” served on a banana leaf was a pile of four soft dosas, free from oil and topped by coconut chutney, potatoes and two small pats of butter.

Some ‘Nameless’ regulars who were butter-addicts brought in their own larger stock from a nearby shop. They would splash the butter with ferocious fervour on the warm ‘sets’ whose softness seemed to resist the probe of their fingers.

All of us washed down our ‘sets’ by drinking the celebrated Mysore brew––the steaming filtered coffee.

To those with a low appetite or a lean purse, or wanting to share the “sets” and coffee, the restaurant ungrudgingly offered “one-by-two” and even one-by-three” service which is something very special to Mysore: Your right to eat the quantity you needed or to share it with another was recognised by the owner.

Mysore then was free from the impact of the broad gauge train and the jet plane.

It was famous not only for its cuisine but also for agarbathis (scented incense sticks), areca, betel, silk and sandal. One was struck by the vast variety and abundance of flowers in the markets and their regular use by every one in town. Jasmine––mallige–-was the people’s favourite.

Right opposite the restaurant where I ate, I saw many girls and women buying arm lengths of jasmine to adorn their plaits. The most popular book of modern Kannada poetry by K.S. Narasimha Swamy is named after the jasmine––Mysooru Mallige.

I returned home in an auto rickshaw which was also filled with jasmine scent. In front of the driver was a framed picture of Hanuman decorated with strings of mallige.

I complimented him on his good taste only to be told that he had to eat only half a ’set’ at the restaurant so that he could buy the flowers.

Did not Saadi say that if he had two loaves, he would sell one and buy a narcissus?

First posted on churumuri

I don’t know if the “ban” on the sale and consumption of junk food and aerated drinks in school and college campuses in the State, recommended by Medical Education Minister Dr V.S. Acharya will work.But I certainly like his advocacy of chaklis and undes as worthy alternatives to crisps, colas and candy.

I can’t say much about the ban because government-run educational institutions are increasingly places where those who have no other option, or those who cannot afford chips, colas and candy, go to.

So, whether banning something their students do not or cannot consume is such a startlingly good idea, I know not.

On the other hand, I am wondering, in an era when ministers defend their turfs like bloodhounds (remember the Union I&B minister squabbling with the Union health minister over the ban on smoking on screen?), if the writ of the medical education minister extends over the primary and higher education departments, or the directorate of collegiate education over a matter not involving education but food?

More to the point, are fancy private schools and colleges dutybound to implement such rules, without cries of intrusion from fancy students and their even fancier parents for whom crisps, colas and candy are becoming fashion statements?

The minister’s rationale for the ban is that their unbridled sale and consumption can cause damage to teeth and bones, if not result in malnutrition leading to obesity.

Dr Acharya is a man of medicine, so we can take him on his word.

He even cites the example of the United Kingdom where there is a tight check on what school and college cafeteria can or cannot sell. Indeed, he claims, there is a tight check on food sold in the immediate vicinity of the institutions, too.

To that, we can add whether children should be exposed to monopolies on campus, but we will let that pass.

But the point to ponder is whether young people consume all their chips and kurkure in schools and colleges? If they cannot buy it there, surely they are smart enough to buy it elsewhere?

Maybe, mom stores them at home?

That’s why I say I am not so sure about efficacy of the ban.

Which is where his advocacy of chakli and unde comes.

Dr Acharya says these are made fresh, contain urad dal and black gram, and have the requisite content of vitamins, carbohydrates and fat that young bodies need.

In other words, they are much better than untouched-by-human-hand crisps, colas and candy.

Whether there is a hint of the “Hindu Nationalist Party” behind this avowedly desi suggestion is not difficult to guess, but surely there is little to be argued even if there is.

What can be so patently wrong about saying that it is better you eat what your people make?

It is Dr Acharya’s underlying freudian belief that the local snack industry is languishing and may need a leg up that deserves closer examination.

The disappearance of fresh, locally made snacks, although probably inevitable, is one of the sadder phenomena.

In the late 1970s, my cousin Guru worked in a outfit which made upperi in Chamundipuram and which women, usually widows and very poor girls, went and sold door to door.

Such cottage industries have more or less vanished, although there are now a couple of joints between the Apollo hospital and Cauvery school in Kuvempunagar, which make and sell locally made snacks at frightening speed.

Even today, every three weeks or so, a man on a cycle wearing cooling glasses waltzes into 8th Main Road, Yadavagiri, screaming: “Chakli, koda bale, rave unde.”

(On weeks he can’t make it, his wife, hauls along the stuff on the same men’s cycle, bar and all, that must be the family’s only mode of transport.)

So, nobody can claim that the local snack industry is dead; it’s more centralised in the hands of a few big players.

Indeed, as George Orwell wrote in the case of second-hand bookshops, it is only those who haven’t worked in one, who romanticise them.

Likewise, chakli, koda bale makers.

It is possible we mourn their passing, although they themselves must be pretty happy at having graduated to something more paying, smething more secure.

But what we can truly mourn is the non-availibiliy of good chakli and koda bale in pubs and bars.

Spicy koda bale and cold Kingfisher beer may be the greatest culinary combo the war of 1857 wrought on us (that’s the year United Breweries was set up). And yet to find our watering holes serving ghoulish gobi manchurian takes the breath away.

I once asked Ramesh Bopaiah, the man who runs Bopy’s Pub near Aishwarya Petrol Bunk, why he couldn’t put churumuri or koda bale on his menu.

“Margin,” said Ramesh, ever the businessman. “If I serve them, all my customers will eat is churumuri and koda bale. And you know who earns the most on my staff? The cooks. They need to be making and we need to be selling stuff that will earn them their pay.”

So, I don’t know if Dr Acharya’s school ban will work, but if ever he wants support to put them on the menus in pubs and bars, he can count me in.

First posted on churumuri on 3 April 2006