MTR or Mavalli Tiffin Rooms of Bengaluru

 

A trip to MTR, located just next to Lalbagh, is mandatory if you are visiting Bengaluru. For a new comer, the place, which looks like a small 3 story residential dwelling, can be very confusing.

When you enter, you see a guy sitting behind a small table, number of dhoti clad men loitering around, a small staircase leading upwards and a strong pervading smell of sambhar. If you insist, you can prepay here for your tea or coffee but nothing else. Any further question, you are directed to staircase.

What you see upstairs is a medium sized room fitted with wooden benches and lots of people waiting. Room is adorned with old photographs. The room appears more like the waiting room of a medical practitioner than a restarunt. On the side there is a guy sitting next to a half closed sliding door with a writing pad. He asks for your name and points out to one of the wooden benches.

You sit and wait. Minutes tick by. Nothing happens. After a long wait of 20 odd minutes, the sliding door opens and a group of people trickles out. After some time the door keeper announces names of people, who can go in. If you are lucky you get in, otherwise have to wait for the next lot.

Finally you get into another room with old wooden tables and chairs. Dhoti clad waiters rush about and take orders. You order what you want and wait again.

After a while, food arrives. The first bite itself would tell you that why the wait was worth it. Dosas are fab. Never eaten that good a Dosa. Even tea and coffee are good. I get my favourite black filter coffee.

Waiters are very friendly. He tells me that the place is 98 years old. He brings the bill. Surprisingly amount is very modest.

As you walk out you are filled with satisfaction and happyness. That is all what MTR is about.

Perils in withdrawing cash

If there is one thing that I always  shudder to think about; it is withdrawing cash from a bank or an ATM. Whenever I realise that I am short of cash and I would have to visit a bank, I become tense and uneasy, even when I know that it is my own money and I have every right to withdraw it from the bank. Though I have been doing it for years and years, it still gives me goosebumps.

Last week a young woman was attacked, while withdrawing money from an ATM, early in the morning, in the Indian city of Bengaluru. This incident has brought to fore again, the risks and dangers that can await anyone while carrying out this mundane task. This incident really set me thinking and I realised that I have had so much varied experiences in withdrawing cash that the readers might find it very interesting.

It all started when I took up a job as a young engineer way back in 1960's. I worked in an office that was located in Mumbai's posh Nariman point area. Since our company had told us that our salaries would be directly credited to our bank accounts, it became necessary to open an account in a bank branch nearby so that I could withdraw cash during my lunch recesses. I opened an account in a bank nearby known as 'UCO Bank.' Banks were not nationalised then and this bank belonged to an Industrial conglomerate controlled by Birla group. When I was told by end of the month that my salary was credited to my account, I went to the bank. I found that withdrawing money from this bank branch was a nightmarish affair. The bank had number of cages where its staff sat. After a cheque was submitted to a clerk, he would give back a brass token with a number engraved on it. It would take about half an hour to reach the cashier, who would then call names on a public address system. I had to enter another cage and return the brass token to get my cash. The whole experience gave a distinct feeling of being unwanted in the bank. Very soon, when a branch of 'First national city bank, opened in the same building, where my office was located, I shifted my account there. This bank was just opposite of the earlier bank. Everyone including the cashier sat in open and there was a teller system. Being a new branch, sometimes they did not even had bank ledgers with them. So when a customer wanted to withdraw cash, they would telephone head office, find out the cash balance in the account and simply handed over the cash. By so far this was the most pleasant banking experience for me.

In those days, if one travelled abroad, one had to carry what was called as Traveller's cheques, which were encashable in the local currency at a bank. Once, a bank in France refused to encash my traveller's cheque because they said my passport had a worn look and asked me to go to their head office. A bank in US insisted in giving me 100 Dollar bills only, when I pleaded for 10 or 20 Dollar bills. There would always be few moments of tension and suspense as the foreign bankers examined my traveller's cheque as if that piece of paper has come from another planet and most reluctantly would part with their cash.

Later, computerisation came to the banks and ledgers were substituted and new ATM machines came up. I can not say that with these modern gadgets, my anxiety, when withdrawing cash, really diminished in any way, it actually got enhanced. Here are some of my ATM experiences. Firstly a word or two about the machines themselves. ATM machines have no standardisation at all. Some machines require your debit card to be kept inserted all through the transaction time, whereas some machines require it to be inserted and removed back immediately. Some machines want you to prove that you are not a robot and ask you to punch a two digit number before you can actually commence the transaction operation. Some machines ask your preferred language. All this really confuses me so much that even after having used the ATM, hundred's of times, I am still a bundle of nerves, while entering an ATM machine kiosk.

About 2 years back I was visiting Leh city, capital of India's northernmost region, Ladakh. While planning for the trip I had estimated that I would need around 30000 Rupees for food and shopping expenses there. I took 10000 Rupees cash with me and thought that I would withdraw balance amount from an ATM there, a decision which later I regretted much. Leh is a city of 100000 people with as many tourists at any given time. This city unfortunately has just 4 ATM machines. Almost at any time of the day, there is a queue of at least 100 or 150 people in front of the ATM machines. I had to make at least two attempts and waste several hours to get cash. Besides the ATM's are so badly managed there that when one stands before a machine, at least 4 people keep looking at the data he is putting in the machine. After that unpleasant experience, I have always started carrying cash around instead of debit cards, when I travel.

One State bank ATM Kiosk, which I frequent, has a machine which behaves according to its own whims and fancies. Sometimes I get a message that my debit card is unauthorised. Another ATM kiosk set up by Bank of India, also has a accounts statement printer machine standing next to it. There are always other people in the kiosk snooping on you, when you withdraw cash, which makes one feel insecure.

So what should we do? I suppose there is no alternative to using ATM's, but if one follows these norms, which I follow strictly, the chances of happening something similar to what happened to a young lady in Bengaluru city last week are extremely rare. My first rule is to visit the ATM as far as possible during working hours. I never withdraw cash in evenings, early mornings or nights. Sometimes, this may not be possible, I would then choose a ATM which is not located in a remote place. If I have to withdraw large amounts of cash, I go to the bank itself and normally request someone from the family to go with me. Visiting ATM's in strange, unfamiliar places and that too at night is an open invitation to anti social elements.

ATM's no doubt bring lots of convenience to our day to day life. We should treat them with respect and caution.

26^th November 2013

Dinner theater

As a major attraction, many of the places, that are famous for fine dining, usually offer to their customers, some form of some live artistic performances. These are normally in form of instrumental or vocal music and even Jazz bands. Sometime back, I had visited a small place in Chicago, where a Jazz band would play every evening entertaining the patrons. I also remember that on Bengaluru's Brigade road, there was one such restaurant and where I would invariably go for my dinner, whenever I was in town for some business trip or other, simply because a smooth voiced male singer, with a good instrumental accompaniment, would sing there, all the latest hits of Bollywood actor/singer “Kishor Kumar.” I still remember his rendering of a famous song from a Bollywood hit film “Amar Prem.” I have forgotten now even the name of the restaurant, yet vividly remember, the rendering of that song. Such is the power of music. No doubt that a live musical performance, adds immensely to the ambiance of the eatery.

A restaurant in Singapore has now taken this dinner time entertainment a step further. It has started offering a short drama play to the diners for a few days, while they enjoy some finest gourmet food. Fine Palace cafe, located on Waterloo street, is offering a somewhat morbidly titled play “The Woman who cooked her Husband” to the diners. However, the audience, would not be served the cooked husband (Ha Ha!) but a 3 course gourmet dinner. The audience would be limited only to 30 patrons.

As I see it, one possible outcome of such kind of entertainment, could be that the patrons would neither fully enjoy the drama nor the food, as their attention wold get divided. This was really a challenge faced by the creative team as it wanted to incorporate the food served to the patrons into the theatrical event itself so that the diners would not feel the whole effort as a disconnected “dinner theater event.” Singapore is known world over, as a “foodie” country and food is highly regarded here. Show organizers hope that foodies of Singapore would be enticed to watch the drama because of gourmet menu.

Initially the idea was that the actors themselves would be serving the food. The idea was quickly vetoed by the restaurant management because to serve 30 patrons efficiently a much larger number employees would be needed. So now the kitchen and the wait staff will be on hand to prepare and serve food as the show goes on.

The audience would now choose from a watered down version of standard menu. Since the original play was written by an English author and produced in England around 1990, the show organizers have selected dishes that emphasize modern European cuisine with an Asian touch.

The logistics of serving food is now linked to the plot of the play. Everything has been fixed in such a way that serving would be linked with specific time markers from the play. An interesting problem, however remains to be solved. Throughout this play, some of the characters are shown drinking and the actors want real alcohol served to them. The show organizers remain worried and hope that they do not have to physically carry the actors home because they are drunk.

27 May 2013

Donkeys of Bengaluru

During my childhood days, most of the roads in my home town Pune, were never metalled and were very dusty. Occasionally, whenever any motor vehicle would pass through, it would raise a huge cloud of dust. Yet, there were few occasions, when I felt that the dust cloud created by a passing motor vehicle was just a small aberration of the beautiful and clean environment of my lovely old Pune. This major catastrophe would come about very suddenly, when I would be cycling on the road. A giant dust storm would suddenly appear on the horizon with sounds like "Zyack, Zyack" being heard. It was always an act of prudence to get down from the bicycle and wait patiently on a road side. Within a minute, a running squad of fifty or sixty donkeys associated with their care taker donkey-boys would pass me and after another couple of minutes, when the dust was settled, I could brush off the excess dust on my clothes and proceed further. All those donkeys would be loaded with construction materials like sand, crushed stones, bricks or excavated earth. For construction industry of those days, donkeys were the chief mode of transport and not the trucks or three wheelers of today. Later it became uneconomic to use donkeys for transportation and these four or three wheelers took their place.

Coorg Diary - Part I

मंगळवार

बेंगलुरूच्या विमानतळावर आमचे विमान उतरले तेंव्हा सकाळचे साडे दहा वाजून गेले होते. बेंगलुरूचा हा नवीन विमानतळ मोठा प्रशस्त व नेटका आहे. पण या विमानतळावर येणार्‍या उतारूंची मुख्य अडचण काही वेगळीच आहे. हा नवीन विमानतळ शहरापासून 30-40 किलोमीटर तरी अंतरावर आहे. त्यामुळे विमानतळावरून शहरात जायचे म्हणजे एकतर मोठ्या वाहतूक मुरंब्याला तोंड द्यावे लागते आणि दुसरे म्हणजे टॅक्सीचे भाडे 500 ते 600 रुपये तरी द्यावे लागते. विमान प्रवासचे तिकिट 2000 रुपये आणि टॅक्सी भाडे 600 रुपये हे गणित काही पचनी पडत नाही. विमान तळ बांधतानाच त्यापासून ते शहरापर्यंत जलद वाहतुक सेवा कशी देता येईल याचा विचार आपल्याकडचे नियोजक का करत नाहीत? हे एक कोडेच आहे.