Indian Coffee House - An Old World Charm

I usually get a lift to office from a colleague of mine. So I walk all the way from Commercial Street to the entrance of Brigade road and get picked up from in front of Cauvery Handicrafts at about 8:10 AM. So today I was waiting at the same place when I get a call from the colleague saying that the car has had a puncture and will take atleast half an hour to reach MG Road.

So I decided to walk down Brigade road and see if some place is open where I can do some timepass. I realised that when you take a walk on that road when nothing is open, you do notice a lot of shops, which you would have missed on a crowded friday evening. But I was surprised to see a "Kohinoor Restaurant" on Brigade road. It is so shabby that I really didnt want to taste the coffee there. And you wouldnt believe it, there is no newspaper vendor also anywhere.

So I decided to take a walk on MG road towards Kumble circle. Luckily for me, the Deccan Herald office there sells Deccan Herald on MG road. So newspaper problem solved, but where do I sit/ stand and read it. I keep walking till I see Indian Coffee House. The door was closed. And somehow I thought they opened early morning. But then, one person, just pulled open the door and went in. That is when I realised that they were allowing people in. So I too enter the hotel to find atleast 4 tables occupied with people reading newspapers and no tea/coffee served.



It was 8:15 AM. Most of the people were old and were deeply immersed in their newspapers. I take the table next to the big, wide window overlooking the MG road. After some time an old man comes and sits on the other side of my table, though there were some 4-5 tables that were unoccupied! He gave me some suspicious, I-have-not-seen-you-here-before looks. That is when I realised that maybe he was a regular customer and this is his usual table and I am the one who is encroaching. We sat on the same table without talking to each other but exchanging smiles.

That is when I started noticing the crowd coming into ICH. A chauffeur driven car stops and a couple in their thirties come in for break fast. A old red kinetic honda parks on the side and two girls in khader, with jute bags come in. The old man orders egg sandwich and I ask for tea. The walls have not been given a new coat of blue for I dont know how many years. The wooden panelling has come off at most places. I see that the footpath outside has the same mosaic pattern as the inside.

After I read India's heroic exploits in the common wealth games and the pathetic display in Mumbai, my coffee is over and I get a call from my colleague. Time to gte back to the real world. For some time I was living life in slow motion.

Grenade & Ram Mohammad Thomas

The picture is of a grenade, cut into half.

The place where I am currently put up, is owned by a retd. Colonel. The other half of the grenade is with a jawan who saved all their lives by throwing back a grenade at the LTTE attackers in Sri Lanka.

It sits proudly as a table top in his office.

Reading a book called "Q & A", by Vikas Swarup. Tight read hai. The lead character is called Ram Mohammad Thomas and he has just won one billion ruppees in a TV show. The TV producers think he has cheated (more to do with their inability to pay so much right now), he thinks he got lucky because they asked him 12 questions, whose answers were known to him. How and why is what the book is all about.

Mumbai - another view

Welcome to Mumbai

The Premier Padmini Taxi, decorated and lighted very well, playing the AIR commentary on the ongoing Test match


The Movie Capital boasts of many multiplexes, this is one of the 2 completed ones in Thane. A lot of my weekends have been spent here

The much talked and discussed about Mill Lands in Central Mumbai. There was a mill there the last time I passed by...

And what Mumbai without Vada Paav...this small Tapri was a hotspot during my NPIL days

Night at Paddy's in Bangalore

The future of Blogs

I was wondering what would be the future of blogs!!!

1. Would Blogger (read Google) market the blogs such that they would take prints of your blogs, bind it into a book and sell it to you?
2. Would they go one step ahead and let you/your friends order online, make prints and send it to them?

Obviously they would be paying you some kind of royalty on this. But the sheer amount of resources they have built up in such a short span of time is humungous. Well it is a good idea, as I think some of the blogs are extremely funny and would save a lot of logistics problems for the would-be-author.


Anyways having a nice time here in Bangalore!!!

Going Back

I should be in Bangalore tonite.

Well if you are into football then the next two nights are important ones for Football. Though I love this game, I have never really written anything on it. Should be doing that once the World Cup starts.

Btw check this out for some good timepass

Putra Jaya the new capital

India: Our time will come

When we were in school, Geography classes were fun. Except for the monsoon part (I am still confused about the South West Monsoon and North East Monsoon), I loved the subject. The best part was the Map drawing part, where you had to mark the various rivers, cities with iron deposits, mountain ranges etc etc. India had everything that any country would want to have, except for good deposits of Petroleum. So when petrol is cheap in countries like Malaysia (where there are some deposits of oil and gas) and USA (who buy from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria etc etc), Indians pay a lot for it. It drives the prices of a lot of service goods and commodities in the process and ultimately, our country becomes a costlier place to live in, but with very low standard of living.

The exterme north of India had a different shape of Kashmir. As I left school, I realised that what we drew in geography class and what we see on TV or a globe or atlas was different. There was a particular part called POK, Siachen and people are fighting for their freedom in North east. Well India was a hell lot different place to live in than what you see on the map.

As we left school, I realised that there were lot of problems with the country. Their was rampant poverty, burden of unemployment, exploding population, increasing rift between the haves and the have-nots and many such unheard of phenomenons. The map disappeared from memory. IT was a boon for India. If it was not IT, I wonder which industry would have got so many jobs for Engineers, Science Graduates and now all graduates. It came as a blessing for this country. Suddenly, when technology evened things out, India was a global player. More than that, Indians were being seen as a class apart when it came to putting mind to work.

Slowly India exploded and then the issues that faced the nation were crowded public transport, inadequate infrastructure and tarffic jams. Well these were what affected me. I am sure the poverty, unemployment and illiteracy remained in a corner somewhere. Today we are looking at competing against the Chinese economy and it is one hell of a game. It is a 100m race where the Chinese are starting 20 m ahead of us. India has to get the infrastructure in place before even starting the race. Just to give an example, Beijing airport is being revamped for the Olympics in 2008 and that airport alone would be able to cater to the entire air-traffic of all the airports in India today!!!

Our country has been given a lot of prominence by the recent visits of the French president, the American President and the future visit of the Australian PM etc. So the world has started to take notice. Should we bend over backwards in welcoming them to our country? I am sure Manmohan Singh realises that he is miles ahead of Bush when it comes to intellectual capacity and so will our country when compared to the US, sometime soon. In Mallu there is a proverb, "Kaaryam kanaan chelepol kazhuthe kaal pidikenam", which means, sometimes to get your way through, you have to touch the feet of even donkeys. Thats all.

All I can say is our time will come.

Saw the movie Munich. A good watch. Well made movie. I somehow love the way the Israelis do things. Also liked this particular dialogue by Manmohan Singh "Terrorism anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere".

When there is Flu change to Sea food

Well how do you tackle this????





With this, ofcourse!!! How???

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