Bangalore Diaries

Acknowledgment: Parthiv Haldipur for showing me around his city and not allowing me to pay a penny out of my pocket for our travails.

Outside, the Sun was shining hot. It was hurting the human flesh like needles. Inside the air-conditioning was chilling the bones, freezing the thoughts. The mind is a strange organ. It needs uniformity, it demands challenge.

When you think that you are tired and need rest, soon your mind becomes restless for action. Attending a seminar is as torturous as the implementation of the Ludovico Technique on Alex in the movie ‘The Clockwork Orange’. Soon the mind rebels the torture and wants to break free, but in the absence of such a freedom, it is made to withstand the pain, till it numbs the senses.

But I don’t intend to write a commentary on torture techniques, I intend to explore the feeling of euphoria once you have been able to successfully break free before being destroyed by it.

The feeling of crashing the glass of hot water before it can scald the naked fingers holding it is probably a feeling of victory but more essentially of extreme joy. To come out as a martyr is glorifying, but not as rewarding as being the victor.

Such was the nature of my recent visit to Bangalore. It would end up in a fight between the constipating force of monotonous lectures against the beautiful city of Bangalore and its food.

Day 1: Kebab Trail

The advantage of an early start is always the obvious one, you get to do more. The train reached Bangalore in the wee hours of the morning. There was really nothing I could have done to alter this reality, so I accepted it. I reached the guest house, thankful to God for giving me the soft bed and the clean, attached bathroom. After spending almost an hour in the bathroom cleaning up and ridding myself of the odor picked up on the journey, I slipped into shorts and decided to have some sleep. Well, it was only a wish which was not meant to be fulfilled, so I stopped trying. The weather was pleasant. I stepped out into the Sun and decided to have a walk down the streets of Bangalore. It was a long walk indeed as I moved from one main road to another cross road in Malleshwaram, up and down the undulating terrain of the city. The immediate feeling was nice, but I would come to realize later the ill effects of losing the good habit of taking long walks. For the time being though, I was high on endorphins and nothing could ever go wrong.

Day 1 was the day of the kebab trail. I have very little knowledge of Bangalore. In fact, this was my first visit to this city. It rained that day, very heavily in the evening. By the time it was dusk, the rain had almost stopped and the temperature had cooled down considerably.

On a tuktuk, Parthiv and myself ventured out from where we were, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in the north, to the heart of the city, the Brigade Road area. It was getting dark, so even though my friend was trying his best to guide me, I had no clue where we were going.

Through several streets we rode on the rickshaw, then alighted and walked through narrow lanes. We came to the back side of Bishop Cotton Boys School. We had reached our destination. The approach to the destination seemed a little like the back side road of St Xavier’s College in Calcutta. This was just the beginning of a rising feeling that Bangalore held an uncanny resemblance to my hometown, Calcutta.

From a distance, the shop did not look like much. I thought it was some kind of roll joint selling kaati rolls, a favorite snack of Indians. A crowd of people stood in front of the shop counter, which was basically a standing person behind a tall desk with a drawer for putting in money. The shop was divided into two parts and at first glance it was difficult to recognize whether they were the same or two different shops. On one side two men were frying different kinds of preparations in pots and tawas. One the other side, four or five different types of coal ovens were cooking kebabs and rotis.

One of their signature dishes is the beef phaal which is made of diced beef steak, char-grilled on a clay oven. The unique dish is a specialty kebab preparation of Bangalore. Their veal kebab also needs mention, and though it is not made from veal (meat from calf), the texture of the shredded meat was very delectable indeed. Last, I have to mention the nalli soup made of beef bone marrow which seemed like a refreshing appetizer.

Needless to mention, the little excursion left me wanting more. It evoked in me the nostalgia of my kebab trails in Calcutta, another city which boasts of a very elaborate kebab and mughlai culture.

Day 2: Stuck in a Moment

The day the meeting started at the IISc campus could not have been a great day for mankind. Outside, the Sun was shining hot. It was hurting the human flesh like needles. Inside the air-conditioning was chilling the bones, freezing the thoughts. The mind is a strange organ. It needs uniformity, yet it demands challenge.

From 9 o’clock in the morning torture started. It was meant to numb the rebellious mind, cool the boiling blood. In the darkness of the lecture hall, it was meant to give nightmares in the day time. It was the deed of cold logic made impassionate by those who have been murdered through the same process of lectures.

It seemed like living hell, in the midst of dead people breathing on artificial life support. The drone of the speaker resembled the whisper of Frankenstein. There was no spark, neither was there laughter, but there was the constipated agony of a blocked tube of epoxy adhesive. Everything seemed hollow and physics itself would have been amazed at the sight of the black hole made by the hundreds of dull, silent faces.

Lunch came after what seemed like eternity. The vegetarian fare consisted of pulao, rice, dal, paneer, sambaar dal and rasam. If there happened to be anything else I must have missed it for the pure obliviousness of the food. The vanilla ice-cream with gajar ka halwa was a bright spot and managed to elicit a smile from my face.

Coming back to the murmur of scientific paranoia, the venue to everyone’s chagrin was changed. It resulted in a long, unnecessary walk in the hot afternoon Sun, after which not a drop of water was there to drink. I thought I was dead for a little while. Life could never have been as ugly and distasteful, as scientist after scientist poured out their schizophrenic suspicions on the persecution of microorganisms supposed to cause havoc in the living human being. I wondered whether anything would ever happen to them if ever a virus were to infect them, dead as they seemed to be.

It was after a long time, after more than five hours of smoked brain currying that respite came in the form of dinner time. The garden area of the IISc guest house was well decked up and several kiosks were put up serving different fares. The sambaar dal and rice could not be avoided, but there was appam and stew in addition and the combination was good. Moreover there was a spicy preparation of chicken with pepper corns and a Mangalorean fish curry which seemed to be the pick of the menu. Appam with fish curry seemed to go well. Finally, dessert was mango ice-cream with jalebi, a unique combination, but it seriously worked.

The day ended in me picking up some injury to my feet with some skin peeling due to excessive walking. Lying down supine on my guest house bed was probably the best thing that happened. The respite would not be extended too far, but I knew that I needed it at the moment so didn’t think of the 7AM alarm I put for the next morning.

Day 3: More of the Same

It is difficult to express monotony without being repetitive. The third day was monotonous thus I must repeat myself by saying how everything seemed to be like constipated agony of a blocked tube of epoxy adhesive. Respite came finally in the form of a luncheon sponsored by my guide at an Andhra restaurant on Sankey Road, Nandhini Deluxe. Parthiv had recommended trying out the mutton masala, which we did and it was pretty good, with the trademark flavors of coconut milk and curry leaves.

The post-lunch session of activities was what I can call the lowest point of the trip. The endless drone of lectures continued well past five o’clock. My tummy was filled with lamb, and it was getting more dehydrated every minute. I did manage to survive the horrendous trip of disgusting patience, and once on the other side, I fled at once to my guest house for a good evening’s worth of nap.

I did wake up before the night was done and had a glass of mango milk shake from the campus to ease my tattered nerves. The next day I knew would be as bright as the first morning of spring. The torture had ended. I could sleep longer, and I did not have to notify my presence in that dark dungeon of the lecture theatre.

Day 4: Finally, the Icing on the Cake

One of the most dominant daydreams I have been having for the last couple of days was of a lazy morning. Needless to say, I would not have left the soft cushions of the bed even if an earthquake were to raze the city to the ground.

By the time it was luncheon time, the skies were getting darker, and according to my local guide, it always happens like this in Bangalore, though it does not guarantee rain. A breeze was blowing which sometimes picked up its pace almost in ominous foreboding of an approaching storm.

We walked a little more till we reached a little place called ‘The Only Place’. It wasn’t much to look at from outside, but most great restaurants are not much to look. The inside had a different story to tell, and was quite homely.

The whole restaurant area was nothing more than a shaded enclosure, open on three sides, the fourth side bearing the kitchen. The weather in Bangalore is never usually really bad, so there is no need for air-conditioning. But things seem to be changing a bit the last few years. Anyway, we were lucky that on that particular day as a gentle breeze was blowing and it was pleasant. A nice juicy steak wouldn’t do much harm to the sweat glands, I thought.

Apart from having to wait for about half an hour for a table, there were no major glitches in that expedition. The menu had a list of steaks running from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. There were tenderloin steaks and sirloin steaks and small steaks and jumbo steaks, steaks for every European taste bud and for every size of appetite.

The steaks finally reached our table. The poached eggs, sunny side up, covering the pink and black stripes of the medium done beef steak with mashed potatoes, glazed onions, some greens, and served with garlic bread did little to abrogate the desire of pouncing on it. If there was a leopard running for the steak, I would probably break its neck. The meal was wholesome. There was no doubt in my mind. The afternoon was pleasant. The meat-sweat was avoided.

I will now go back to a statement I made about how I found Bangalore similar to Calcutta in many ways. First, it is the weather. With the thunderstorm and rain, and that smell of wet earth the resemblance was unmistakable. In the absence of rain, the warm and extremely humid weather is another point of similarity I found. The fruits and vegetables available here are unlike what you would find in the north of the country, but they could be found eastwards. Then there is the stamp of a rich British colonial rule in both the places, and its heavy influence in the molding of the culture of both cities. Last, was the food loving nature of the inhabitants which has resulted in the spawning of so many great restaurants, and which are not run by glamour, but are run by the love of food of the customers and the enduring hospitality on the part of the restaurant owners. This same traditionalism is what gets a city like Calcutta going, where people are happy with good hospitality without feeling cheated, where people feel comforted to be recognized by known faces.

I will not deny that the winds of change are sweeping through Bangalore, and will do so too through Calcutta, but I will always hope that the hearts that have made the cities unique remain where they are. For, to me Bangalore seemed as deep-rooted in middle-class values as Calcutta is steeped in familial customs. The origins of both cities go back several hundreds of years, and even if the occupants may change with the coming and going of every generation, the traditions remain the same, like the roots and branches of the banyan tree.

Dwaipayan Adhya