'Bath' @ Udupi Hotels

If I called Trivandrum the Land of coconuts, Bangalore or even the entire South India can easily be called the land of bath.

I found it very interesting to see ‘Rice bath’ in the menu items of all the Udupi hotels here. Yes, they are called Udupi hotels and are more like small vegetarian snacks/meals hotels you will find near Bus Stands in Maharashtra. But these hotels are very well maintained, clean and provide quite hygienic food as compared to what you can expect a hotel of that size to. Coming back to Rice Bath, my first and obvious reaction to the name was a big LOL as the two words are synonyms in Marathi. I would rather spell it ‘Bhaat’ as that’s the way it is pronounced. I tried to ask a couple of people what that means, the answers I got ranged from ‘bath’ means mixture to “Its called bath because they bathe the rice with different substances!!”

For people who have never had Rice bath, it means some item of rice either Lemon Rice, Puleogre(Tamarind Rice), Curd rice, Bisebile Bath(Spicy dal-rice much like amti-bhaat), Pongal (plain dal and rice with mainly coconuts and ginger – much like modified sadhavaran bhaat), Tomato rice and even Palav (They call Pulav that way). They could go on to make many more varieties!!

The other things you get plenty and good in these hotels is Dosa. Now there is Plain Dosa, Masala Dosa and Set Dosa. Set Dosa looks like a small thick dosa and usually served in a set of 3(quite filling for a meal)
Then there is of course the famous Idly and Vada. Mind you, all these things are made from Rice!
If that’s not all, you also get ‘Kesari Bath’ and ‘Khara Bath’. Simply put, Kesari bath is what we call Shira but this one is yellowish-orange in color with supposed to be Kesar in it, and Khara Bath is …? Any guess? it’s Upama!

Want to have some more of bath? I bet not. But if you are still hungry, there’s Avalaki bath (that’s our tasty Pohe which aren’t that tasty here) and also Sevgai Bath (something made of sevaya)

These Udupi hotels are everywhere and always packed with people. One very peculiar thing about these joints is that you can have ample amount of sambar & chatni with anything you take here and you won’t be charged extra for that. All of them will have similar looking wash hand basins, similar aquaguards, same token system and self service and similar broom to clean the dosa tava (it’s a kharata!)

So come on in to the land of Bath, a ‘bath’ treat from me awaits you!

A Dream Come True

Friendship day poem ... August 3, 2003

I had a dream, a dream of wealth
a dream i never thought would suffice so well.
No, I didn't get a pot filled of gold,
instead i got hearts which are wealthier than gold.
I had a dream, a dream of health
mental well being I thought, was difficult to attain
but as i met you my opinions changed,
the jingles of life have come again.
I had a dream, a dream of being loved.
Lovey-dovey friends, i always hankered for,
and then a time came when the right chords struck,
today i am the happiest, in a midst of bliss.
Now that the dreams have come true,
now that the tunes are so much through,
let me say to thee
let us march forward, all the way completely.
Let us today take a oath,
of clasping together for eternal growth,
even when the situ's are grim,
we swear to the heart, we will never quit.

Graffiti out of frustration

“Do not use paper cups for drinking water, it cost 60 paisa per cup” – so stands a notice in the refreshment room on my floor. Well, the room contains water and coffee vending machine for ‘refreshments’. To make for some exquisite graffiti, somebody in a typical school’s toilet style has scribbled on its side, “yeah.. I know it’s a big deal for a $2 Billion Company”.

Right from the day I joined here in Bangalore, I have been largely unimpressed by the facilities provided. You will find people complaining about salary here, but nothing irritates you more when you have to eat food of the most pathetic variety and stand at the BMTC bus stops for a long time while you see loads of busses from different companies going past

There are some very good benefits provided by the company, excellent work environment, variety of technologies and domains, fast career path, onsite opportunities, decent work load and ample holidays but I fail to understand the priorities of the management. Don’t know how the company manages to keep lowest attrition rates in the industry.

Anyway, I thought about for a while whether to post this on the blog or not, but then may be I thought, there is nothing you and me can do about it so there is nothing to lose!

Storms galore in Ban-galore

Saturday Evening, after Ajay Devgan, it was Rain God’s turn to say, “Main Aisa Hi Hoon!!” What I experienced that day was my worst ever fight with nature and today when I am safe at home, I can think of the adventure to be something thrilling. But this adventure could have been a misadventure pretty easily.

It was a sunny Saturday evening when I and one of my friends went out for a Movie in Bangalore’s famous PVR Cinema. As we started for home on my bike, we were sure the rain is going to come down heavily. As I tried to race against time to reach home quickly, there it poured, and how!

The wind left us caught in a leaves-storm and then in a hail-storm of the worst kind I have experienced myself. As I tried to take my bike closer to home, the hail-stones were hitting us like bullets; thank God that day I picked up the helmet at the last moment.
There was water gushing in from everywhere, winds trying to blow me away and initially there were no living objects in sight while later there were so many that Bangalore also managed to have a traffic jam at that juncture. It was really an experience, to be caught in a traffic jam with knee deep water and getting hit left and right with hail-stones!

We somehow stopped at one joint for 5 minutes and then daringly took the bike over muddled roads, footpaths, dark alleys, and even overflowing potholes. It was a thriller in the end so surely the movie was paisa vasool! We were soaked to the bones and had experienced the real power of nature, cold and raw.

The next day’s newspapers were obviously overflowing with reports of Deaths, of people, of trees, of traffic, of roads and the government looking in equal awe as I was! For the statistics, there were 130 electricity poles which went down in south Bangalore alone and innumerable no. of trees which bit the dust (or may be mud). Bangalore is long demanding a metro status from the Indian Government but until it has a disaster management policy in place for this fury of nature which it experiences more often than anywhere else, that dream may well be - a dream.

Land Of Coconuts II

A Follow up from the second week in TCS-TVM.. Oct 4, 2004

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Well, it's going gr8 after 2nd week, the sad part being we were working on sat till 6...

Small tests, lots of group activities, and time pass form the whole of day everyday. 2 breaks of half hr each plus a rushing 45 min lunch are the only times we people from Aurangabad meet in office. But we do meet almost everyday to have our dinner. The MATC which places us to base stations may be coming on 19th Oct to give its presentation and then we will have our mid semester exams, then posting. We are going to be released on 19th Nov and are expected to report at place of posting on 23rd Nov. So NO Going Home....

Abt people from all the places coming here, well, I am enjoying it completely. I learn bit of Tamil, bit of Bengali and teach them a bit of Marathi. Everyone gets amazed and confused at each others way of speaking. On top of this we have one more common language with us now, French! The French facilitator is very good and I have already learned 4 q's and apt answers! They are going to emphasize on effective communication rather than grammar n language, so it's fun, specially those sounds which we don't have in English.

The style of doing project is very professional. We do the projects in our college in such a crude manner na? Our project has been decided. Not the topic but front end is JSP and HTML. Core java for backend and MySQL as database. Only 5 days for coding and rest is development. Imagine this at college level!

We get fed up of the food in a restaurant every two days. So keep on changing. Actually the food at TCS is good but that's only lunch and seeing it everyday is again boring. We have faculty coming from various base branches that aren't actually good at teaching but their exp with project helps a lot.

Kanyakumari is excellent! The merger of three sees is more of a perception rather than anything real but I had that perception... so that's it. Vivekananda Smarak is also good; have to go by a ferry there. Today we went to Kovalam beach about 15 km from here which was an easy ride by the city bus. Enjoyed in the water for about 2-3 hours and came back. It's a beautiful sea there and you never feel like going away from it. We were just the 6 of us from Aurangabad for today's trip.

Ok, bye now. I am tired after the Kovalam masti and tomorrow its 6 am wake up time again. :-)

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Land Of Coconuts

This is a email post of mine from Trivandrum some 8 months back... Sep 29, 2004

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Hello there from Trivandrum... well thiruvananthapuram but no one calls it that way here. TCS is great and going all out. Its 6 AM wake up time, bus at 7:30, and office from 9 to 6. A hectic schedule especially after waking up at 9 for 3 months!

The land is full of coconuts. I had never seen so many coconut trees at the same time, they are everywhere. TCS is located at 'technopark' similar to STPI and in between dense forest of coconuts! It’s a great atmosphere with even a sea view far off.There is strict adherence to dress code. A Cool building, good subsidized canteen, excellent faculty, sufficient library and the computer labs they say are good, I haven't seen them yet. They will give us some email id soon and yahoo etc are blocked so will mail you from that id when I do get access.

Our course contents are basically S/w engg, Java, personality dev(soft skills including dining, talking on phone, manners, etc)a 5 day java project and 2 exams. Emphasis is more on grooming us to Professionals (I don’t know if they would be able toJ). There is lot of talk abt TATA code of conduct, TATA group, Ethics, etc.

Abt rest of the life here, it's a scenario of national integration. It feels really nice seeing people from all over India coming in for a common goal. My room partners are one from Trichi who knows only Tamil and English, while the other Bengali who understands little Hindi.There are people from Jammu, UP, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bombay, Bengal and Gujarat. I have even started talking in malayali style English!

About Trivandrum, it’s a slow city; you can't see a capital city in it. The rates are pretty down may be like Aurangabad and unlike Pune or Bombay. There is a great language problem, people don't know Hindi at all and English in a very fantastic way that you tend to forget your own. I found this internet cafe after great difficulty. Had no time in the last week, and won't be having for at least for a week more.

We had a surprise coding test and one SE test. Not for evaluation purpose I suppose because the way was pretty crude but you never know! I am feeling very happy until now to be in a different environment, a nice exp for 2 months time.

Abt food, you don't get chapattis easily and even if you do get, there is something that they do which makes it very horrible. In TCS too we get chapattis, better than outside but still not up to the mark. Rice is in ample amounts and people go on eating loads of it!TCS canteen has everything we need, veg. and non veg, breakfast, lunch with a decent variety all the time and very cheap.

Tomorrow I am going to kanyakumari. The whole lot of us, and will come back in the night. Ok then, hope to see you soon.

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On Your Mark, Get Set, BLOG...

Hi Everybody!

Starting off today to try my hand at blogging. Let's see what I can do about this :o)
Read some facinating articles from Hrishi and Vijay Kaka and am all inspired to start doing it myself.

Keep your eye at this site... I may have something to offer :-)