The most remarkable places to eat at and hang out in Bangalore are still the unremarkable-looking places with a distinctly small-town flavor, places that have earned their fame by doing what they do exceedingly well.
I’m thinking of Koshy’s, Brahmin’s Café, Coffee House ... where you get served a quick masala dosa and an honest cup of coffee by waiters in crested turbans and cummerbunds. (I haven’t forgotten MTR. I’m trying to. Yes, I’m not embarrassed to admit I don’t care for MTR. See my September 2009 post to know why.)
Or Gangaram’s and Blossom Book Shop, where a guy who’s dusting books can walk over to any part of the store and pull out the exact book you want … something the more polished-looking staff at Crossword and Landmark are at a loss to do, even after eyeballing a computer listing of their inventory.
These are the modest places that make Bangalore feel like the gracious descendant of a cantonment town it was before information technology companies sprang up like warts.
Ultimately, it’s all these little signature places that make the city distinctive, and are in danger of becoming extinct as nouveau Bangaloreans buy into their self-generated fantasy that they’re Silicon Valley (instead of Silicon Halli) and need the upmarket shops and international franchises they’ve seen in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur to make them feel they live in a swinging place.
You can find cookie-cutter franchises like Gloria Jeans Coffee and Hard Rock Cafe in any city in the world. But if you had one day to spend in Bangalore, you’d want to spend it wandering in Malleswaram, not UB City.
A huddle of IT workers drinking Australian beer at a pub does not make a city cosmopolitan. Neither does the trickle of expats from a dozen countries forced to follow their jobs to India and lamenting that this city’s hyped resemblance to Silicon Valley begins and ends at their swanky office campuses.
Bangalore is a reticent town forced to rip off the jasmine in her hair, push out cleavage and throw on some brazen lipstick because out of town people have come courting. I hope the old Bangalore has the courage to re-assert itself.
Showing posts with label Bangalore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangalore. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
Reason #8: You're Not Returning to Eden
Think you’re restoring your children to your Malgudi Days childhood? Think again.
If you’re relocating from overseas because you think you’re giving your children a chance to discover their true identity as Indians, think again.
I speak of Bangalore because I moved here, but this applies to all overseas Indians moving back to India.
Your children are American/British/whatever nationality they have been born into and raised in. Like it or not, accept it or not, that is their new identity. You pushed them into living in your time warp while you were abroad building your cushion of hard currency. But why push your children into duplicating your life and chasing your unachieved dreams?
Yet thus so many children of NRIs live, in a world of parent-approved schizophrenia, where they preserve two conflicting identities: one of compliant over-achievers yearning for the approval of their parents, and the other to be the sum of their hidden desires and find a place in the bigger world outside that they desperately want to belong to but their parents insist they should insulate themselves from.
So many returning Indians think they’ve left their families’ inner Indianness intact and unsullied by all the decay in the West they’ve fearfully cocooned themselves from. They keep their families protected in a cultural capsule, sparing no effort to carefully bring this precious little egg sac of their genes and all their savings back safer and richer to India.
Welcome home and find the same decay here. If you’re returning to a place like Bangalore that prides itself in being globalized, be prepared to run into some of the same problems you might be running from: families caught in the rat race and hard-pressed for time for each other; children getting obese on junk food; narcotic drugs (oh yes, available every where, unregulated and far more cheaper than they were abroad).
Bangalore has among the highest crime and suicide rates in India. With rapid, uncontrolled growth has come a breakdown of old ways across India, and more so in urban India. Bangalore is where old people gather at park benches and talk about all the places in the world their children and grandchildren are scattered.
You do get more time to spend with your family because you can afford to outsource domestic drudgery. But you also spend a lot of time keeping this house of cards from collapsing: supervising staff, picking up the slack when they don’t show up, and just doing many of these chores on your own because you don't want fo let your sense of independence lapse.
And yes, it is easier to prolong your children’s childhood in India, but you aren’t restoring them to the simple, bucolic era of your childhood. You cannot expel Kentucky Fried Chicken and Facebook from their lives. Drugs are cheaper than in New York, and easy to buy.Rapid urbanization has made city life more impersonal. Our elders kept up with their distant cousins despite a decrepit postal and phone system. Now, in the era of mobile phones and social networking, those elaborate family networks have shriveled because no one has time.
If you’re relocating from overseas because you think you’re giving your children a chance to discover their true identity as Indians, think again.
I speak of Bangalore because I moved here, but this applies to all overseas Indians moving back to India.
Your children are American/British/whatever nationality they have been born into and raised in. Like it or not, accept it or not, that is their new identity. You pushed them into living in your time warp while you were abroad building your cushion of hard currency. But why push your children into duplicating your life and chasing your unachieved dreams?
Yet thus so many children of NRIs live, in a world of parent-approved schizophrenia, where they preserve two conflicting identities: one of compliant over-achievers yearning for the approval of their parents, and the other to be the sum of their hidden desires and find a place in the bigger world outside that they desperately want to belong to but their parents insist they should insulate themselves from.
So many returning Indians think they’ve left their families’ inner Indianness intact and unsullied by all the decay in the West they’ve fearfully cocooned themselves from. They keep their families protected in a cultural capsule, sparing no effort to carefully bring this precious little egg sac of their genes and all their savings back safer and richer to India.
Welcome home and find the same decay here. If you’re returning to a place like Bangalore that prides itself in being globalized, be prepared to run into some of the same problems you might be running from: families caught in the rat race and hard-pressed for time for each other; children getting obese on junk food; narcotic drugs (oh yes, available every where, unregulated and far more cheaper than they were abroad).
Bangalore has among the highest crime and suicide rates in India. With rapid, uncontrolled growth has come a breakdown of old ways across India, and more so in urban India. Bangalore is where old people gather at park benches and talk about all the places in the world their children and grandchildren are scattered.
You do get more time to spend with your family because you can afford to outsource domestic drudgery. But you also spend a lot of time keeping this house of cards from collapsing: supervising staff, picking up the slack when they don’t show up, and just doing many of these chores on your own because you don't want fo let your sense of independence lapse.
And yes, it is easier to prolong your children’s childhood in India, but you aren’t restoring them to the simple, bucolic era of your childhood. You cannot expel Kentucky Fried Chicken and Facebook from their lives. Drugs are cheaper than in New York, and easy to buy.Rapid urbanization has made city life more impersonal. Our elders kept up with their distant cousins despite a decrepit postal and phone system. Now, in the era of mobile phones and social networking, those elaborate family networks have shriveled because no one has time.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Birds of the Indian City
Peacocks may be the national bird, but the signature bird of Indian cities has to be the crow.
Crows are everywhere, with their scruffy gray collars, rumpled feathers and glossy, Cherry-blossomed beaks, scouring neighborhoods so they do not miss any interesting leftovers, sights or prey. Throw out something, and they alight in a minute, cocking their heads and commenting loudly on their find.
Hawks are secretive about their catch. They will take it to a safe height and look regally pleased. Crows are not circumspect. They’ll be practically dancing, doing a little victory hop from side to side. “Ka. Ka. Ka,” boastful and insistent. One crow outside my window even did some secret political campaigning every day: “O-ba-ma, O-baa-ma.”
There is little pride or honor in the code of conduct of crows. They will hijack the catch of other birds. Although physically smaller, they tease the hawks and swipe at them until the hawks have to defend their dignity by tearing after their tormenters. The crows give chase, then quickly dip down below roofs. There, they flap and catch their breaths with mirthful taunts as the hawks are forced to suddenly brake their swooping arc and cursingly flap their wings to a safer height. Crows are the cheeky urchins who rule our rooftops.
In Singapore, the common Indian crow is deplored as an illegal immigrant. The government pays rifle owners who shoot down crows, and yet has not been able to thin down its crow population significantly.
When I read about these efforts during my family’s time there, I was moved to show my solidarity for the birds who had been my childhood neighbors in Kolkata. I would tear up slices of bread and strew them over the little picnic mat-sized yard attached to our Singapore condominium. It was my way of thumbing my nose at the rigid control the local government tried to impose on what their citizens did, saw, ate, thought and imagined.
The crows would show up the moment my food scraps hit the grass. They would hop over, bully away the mynahs and scoop up the goodies. They looked better fed and glossier than their cousins in India. Sometimes, I had an ethnic treat for them – day-old chapatis. There was no outpouring of sentimental gratitude from my guests. They ate with the cockiness of local thugs collecting hafta. Still, I invited them. My baby daughter sang with them. Tropical humidity, rain and crows immediately made me feel at home.
Sparrows seem to have disappeared from the city sky. I remember dozens would be perched on electric poles, fidgeting and cheeping anxiously. Now, the trees and electric poles are themselves vanishing. There are fewer places to perch. Buildings have airconditioners belching hot air and noise and floor upon floor of dusty, tinted glass.
Then there are mynahs, stepping quick and dainty in funky yellow lipstick, flying off in a latte-whipped flurry of cocoa and white. In my Bangalore suburb, I also see dozens of black and white tuxedoed magpies, shy olive sunbirds, chattering parrots, and the occasional kingfisher. There is even a crow pheasant, which looks like a crow on steroids with a brown, droopy tail and red eyes, and lives in a strand of ficus nearby. In a few years, most of these birds will probably disappear from my neighborhood as the city’s leafy canopy recedes and the march of concrete and glass-fronted towers invades us.
I have not seen many pigeons around where I live, but along with crows, they are the infantry of the Indian metro. People love to throw broken wheat and grains to feed pigeons. When crows close in on the periphery of a mass pigeon feed, they shoo them away these uninvited guests. The cheek of these dark, uncouth intruders! The crows retreat nearby, protesting their banishment. They take safe little hops to be in the midst of these goodies. Until they’re shooed off again. The crows don’t stick around. They’ll happily zero in on an easy feed any time, but they’re not going to fake the servility of a pigeon or the cute hop of a mynah to get food out of humans. They’ve got standards.
I don’t see the charm of pigeons. They feed constantly, rest their double chins on their pillowy chests, crap and shed flaky feathers everywhere. I could ship them all to Trafalgar Square and let the old ladies sitting in their woolen coats feed them as much as they want to.
I like the raucous frankness, the unpretentiousness, the disarming ordinariness of crows. They know when to back off, but never quit. They keep coming back till they get what they want. They are determined to get the most of any situation. No wonder crows look so comfortable in our midst. They epitomize the spirit of all the migrants who flock to any Indian city.
Crows are everywhere, with their scruffy gray collars, rumpled feathers and glossy, Cherry-blossomed beaks, scouring neighborhoods so they do not miss any interesting leftovers, sights or prey. Throw out something, and they alight in a minute, cocking their heads and commenting loudly on their find.
Hawks are secretive about their catch. They will take it to a safe height and look regally pleased. Crows are not circumspect. They’ll be practically dancing, doing a little victory hop from side to side. “Ka. Ka. Ka,” boastful and insistent. One crow outside my window even did some secret political campaigning every day: “O-ba-ma, O-baa-ma.”
There is little pride or honor in the code of conduct of crows. They will hijack the catch of other birds. Although physically smaller, they tease the hawks and swipe at them until the hawks have to defend their dignity by tearing after their tormenters. The crows give chase, then quickly dip down below roofs. There, they flap and catch their breaths with mirthful taunts as the hawks are forced to suddenly brake their swooping arc and cursingly flap their wings to a safer height. Crows are the cheeky urchins who rule our rooftops.
In Singapore, the common Indian crow is deplored as an illegal immigrant. The government pays rifle owners who shoot down crows, and yet has not been able to thin down its crow population significantly.
When I read about these efforts during my family’s time there, I was moved to show my solidarity for the birds who had been my childhood neighbors in Kolkata. I would tear up slices of bread and strew them over the little picnic mat-sized yard attached to our Singapore condominium. It was my way of thumbing my nose at the rigid control the local government tried to impose on what their citizens did, saw, ate, thought and imagined.
The crows would show up the moment my food scraps hit the grass. They would hop over, bully away the mynahs and scoop up the goodies. They looked better fed and glossier than their cousins in India. Sometimes, I had an ethnic treat for them – day-old chapatis. There was no outpouring of sentimental gratitude from my guests. They ate with the cockiness of local thugs collecting hafta. Still, I invited them. My baby daughter sang with them. Tropical humidity, rain and crows immediately made me feel at home.
Sparrows seem to have disappeared from the city sky. I remember dozens would be perched on electric poles, fidgeting and cheeping anxiously. Now, the trees and electric poles are themselves vanishing. There are fewer places to perch. Buildings have airconditioners belching hot air and noise and floor upon floor of dusty, tinted glass.
Then there are mynahs, stepping quick and dainty in funky yellow lipstick, flying off in a latte-whipped flurry of cocoa and white. In my Bangalore suburb, I also see dozens of black and white tuxedoed magpies, shy olive sunbirds, chattering parrots, and the occasional kingfisher. There is even a crow pheasant, which looks like a crow on steroids with a brown, droopy tail and red eyes, and lives in a strand of ficus nearby. In a few years, most of these birds will probably disappear from my neighborhood as the city’s leafy canopy recedes and the march of concrete and glass-fronted towers invades us.
I have not seen many pigeons around where I live, but along with crows, they are the infantry of the Indian metro. People love to throw broken wheat and grains to feed pigeons. When crows close in on the periphery of a mass pigeon feed, they shoo them away these uninvited guests. The cheek of these dark, uncouth intruders! The crows retreat nearby, protesting their banishment. They take safe little hops to be in the midst of these goodies. Until they’re shooed off again. The crows don’t stick around. They’ll happily zero in on an easy feed any time, but they’re not going to fake the servility of a pigeon or the cute hop of a mynah to get food out of humans. They’ve got standards.
I don’t see the charm of pigeons. They feed constantly, rest their double chins on their pillowy chests, crap and shed flaky feathers everywhere. I could ship them all to Trafalgar Square and let the old ladies sitting in their woolen coats feed them as much as they want to.
I like the raucous frankness, the unpretentiousness, the disarming ordinariness of crows. They know when to back off, but never quit. They keep coming back till they get what they want. They are determined to get the most of any situation. No wonder crows look so comfortable in our midst. They epitomize the spirit of all the migrants who flock to any Indian city.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Reason #7: Neither Garden Nor City
This garden city doesn’t have many gardens and it’s not much of a city.
Bangalore does have more trees and parks than the average Indian metro. But an appallingly large number of these grand, elephantine trees have been sawn down.
And if you can actually cross the streets in an area to walk to the local park, these islands of green are usually filled with jittery lovebirds and evening-walking retirees glaring at them through their monkey caps. For children, there might be a steep concrete slide and some jagged edged play equipment that can cause serious head injuries and tetanus. Some parks have topiaries and lovely soft grass tended by gardeners who shout at people to stay off it.
What strikes you most about Bangalore is how unremittingly filthy and unswept it is. You can go through major streets and see piles of litter, smelly open drains, dug-up footpaths with slabs of concrete jutting unevenly, amputated trees with their remaining foliage brown with dust.
At night, vast stretches of street are routinely dark. Even the old Airport road along HAL, a major provider of military hardware and helicopters, is unlit. Roads outside swanky IT parks look like they were recently bombed.
Laid-back neighborhoods have their trees ripped out to accommodate vehicles and the Metro. And all these are overseen by a municipal corporation whose main function seems to be to preside over the planned degradation of the city.
Bangalore feels like a small town thrust and unwilling stuffed into the ill-fitting clothes of a large metro. You can sense the city’s discomfort and resentment towards this forced transformation everywhere. It is sad to see this sprightly small town reduced to such a resigned shuffle.
Bangalore does have more trees and parks than the average Indian metro. But an appallingly large number of these grand, elephantine trees have been sawn down.
And if you can actually cross the streets in an area to walk to the local park, these islands of green are usually filled with jittery lovebirds and evening-walking retirees glaring at them through their monkey caps. For children, there might be a steep concrete slide and some jagged edged play equipment that can cause serious head injuries and tetanus. Some parks have topiaries and lovely soft grass tended by gardeners who shout at people to stay off it.
What strikes you most about Bangalore is how unremittingly filthy and unswept it is. You can go through major streets and see piles of litter, smelly open drains, dug-up footpaths with slabs of concrete jutting unevenly, amputated trees with their remaining foliage brown with dust.
At night, vast stretches of street are routinely dark. Even the old Airport road along HAL, a major provider of military hardware and helicopters, is unlit. Roads outside swanky IT parks look like they were recently bombed.
Laid-back neighborhoods have their trees ripped out to accommodate vehicles and the Metro. And all these are overseen by a municipal corporation whose main function seems to be to preside over the planned degradation of the city.
Bangalore feels like a small town thrust and unwilling stuffed into the ill-fitting clothes of a large metro. You can sense the city’s discomfort and resentment towards this forced transformation everywhere. It is sad to see this sprightly small town reduced to such a resigned shuffle.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Reason #6: There's Nothing to See or Do
Despite all the wealth and intellect that reside in Bangalore, there are no impressive museums or performing arts centers where one can properly appreciate the immensity of art, music and dance that India produces.
There are pockets of good theatre and performing arts in Malleswaram and Jayanagar, and a few small auditoria here and there, but no grand performing arts center one would expect of a place that fancies itself as a metropolis. Chowdiah Hall, the premier venue for performances, is a concrete violin-shaped building tucked inside a tiny lane in a residential area, with unimpressive acoustics (and a casino-themed washroom with lurid red décor). Getting to these halls in evening traffic is a major expedition.
Museums such as the Vishveshvaraya science museum or the HAL air museum are rinky-dink little collections where half the exhibits are outdated and the rest are broken.
The city’s parks are vanishing. Biking is an activity to be recommended if suicide also figures high on your list of hobbies.
The city has a good sprinkling of book stores, but it is depressing to see so many young people draped along the aisle of self-help books reading Who Moved My Cheese?
The greatest preoccupation in Bangalore is making money. The second greatest preoccupation is spending it, usually shopping or eating out. Malls and restaurants are the cultural hotspots of Bangalore.
There are pockets of good theatre and performing arts in Malleswaram and Jayanagar, and a few small auditoria here and there, but no grand performing arts center one would expect of a place that fancies itself as a metropolis. Chowdiah Hall, the premier venue for performances, is a concrete violin-shaped building tucked inside a tiny lane in a residential area, with unimpressive acoustics (and a casino-themed washroom with lurid red décor). Getting to these halls in evening traffic is a major expedition.
Museums such as the Vishveshvaraya science museum or the HAL air museum are rinky-dink little collections where half the exhibits are outdated and the rest are broken.
The city’s parks are vanishing. Biking is an activity to be recommended if suicide also figures high on your list of hobbies.
The city has a good sprinkling of book stores, but it is depressing to see so many young people draped along the aisle of self-help books reading Who Moved My Cheese?
The greatest preoccupation in Bangalore is making money. The second greatest preoccupation is spending it, usually shopping or eating out. Malls and restaurants are the cultural hotspots of Bangalore.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Reason #5: The Nightlife is ... oh, there isn't any
Bangalore works as cybercoolie to most of the Western world. It is a city that doesn’t sleep because it is busy attending to the housekeeping problems of companies in London, New York and San Francisco.
When people do go out on their night off, there’s not much to party about. A Cinderella law ensures that no establishments serve alcohol after 11.30 p.m. – which is actually 30 minutes less than Cinderella had to party, but be grateful: it used to be 11 p.m. and was extended to 11.30.
Live music is not allowed because the government thinks that dancing to live music leads to prostitution. I’m opaque to this logic, but obviously, people with higher minds and the burden of public welfare on their shoulders have anticipated the dangerous possibility that women who oversee transactions worth thousands of dollars might have a change of heart about their professions as they dance to a live band, and instead consider the career option of hustling hair-oil reeking guys on the street, causing lakhs of rupees in tax losses to the state exchequer.
This regulation doesn’t just insult women. Men should feel insulted, too, because the government assumes they are too stupid or undersexed to be capable of such deviancy.
Bangalore is the city of pubs and of Kingfisher beer. Yes, you can go to any number of places and drink alcohol so you can forget that you're in a city being stubbed to death by its unexpected growth. If you’re a woman, even that simple trip to the pub can be downright dangerous because organizations like the Ram Sena will be sending thugs to beat you up, even if you’re having a beer and biryani with your girlfriends in the afternoon.
When people do go out on their night off, there’s not much to party about. A Cinderella law ensures that no establishments serve alcohol after 11.30 p.m. – which is actually 30 minutes less than Cinderella had to party, but be grateful: it used to be 11 p.m. and was extended to 11.30.
Live music is not allowed because the government thinks that dancing to live music leads to prostitution. I’m opaque to this logic, but obviously, people with higher minds and the burden of public welfare on their shoulders have anticipated the dangerous possibility that women who oversee transactions worth thousands of dollars might have a change of heart about their professions as they dance to a live band, and instead consider the career option of hustling hair-oil reeking guys on the street, causing lakhs of rupees in tax losses to the state exchequer.
This regulation doesn’t just insult women. Men should feel insulted, too, because the government assumes they are too stupid or undersexed to be capable of such deviancy.
Bangalore is the city of pubs and of Kingfisher beer. Yes, you can go to any number of places and drink alcohol so you can forget that you're in a city being stubbed to death by its unexpected growth. If you’re a woman, even that simple trip to the pub can be downright dangerous because organizations like the Ram Sena will be sending thugs to beat you up, even if you’re having a beer and biryani with your girlfriends in the afternoon.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Reason #4: The Worst of Both Worlds
You think you’re going to get the best of both worlds for your family, but could end up with the worst of both.
You’re familiar with this math: If I’m earning in dollars and spending in rupees, I couldn’t get any closer to winning a lottery. With servants to do my work, and saving pots of money because everything is dirt cheap, I’m going to live royally.
Isn’t that the ultimate heaven for a middle class Indian, or for anyone on an expat pay package?
It’s a better life than one could imagine when immigrating to London, New York or Sydney. But remember, too, that getting through your average day will sap every ounce of energy and patience you have and cost you dearly. You can’t always count on the government for power supply or water, so be prepared to arrange for your own power back-up, and patronize a water tanker that can drain the city’s depleted borewells even drier.
Getting someone to cook and clean for you and drive you around is wonderful. You could also end up with higher levels of stress because you’ve suddenly become parent, psychiatrist, moneylender and health care provider for your household help. Altering your life to this degree to just get someone to cook meals and dust your house for you? Suddenly this doesn’t seem very attractive.
Also consider that you will spend a great part of your day working with people who don’t deliver on what they’ve promised to, and chasing people who routinely don’t show up when they’re supposed to.
If you’re at a point in your life where you’ve achieved independence, self-sufficiency and equanimity, do you really want to sacrifice these?
You’re familiar with this math: If I’m earning in dollars and spending in rupees, I couldn’t get any closer to winning a lottery. With servants to do my work, and saving pots of money because everything is dirt cheap, I’m going to live royally.
Isn’t that the ultimate heaven for a middle class Indian, or for anyone on an expat pay package?
It’s a better life than one could imagine when immigrating to London, New York or Sydney. But remember, too, that getting through your average day will sap every ounce of energy and patience you have and cost you dearly. You can’t always count on the government for power supply or water, so be prepared to arrange for your own power back-up, and patronize a water tanker that can drain the city’s depleted borewells even drier.
Getting someone to cook and clean for you and drive you around is wonderful. You could also end up with higher levels of stress because you’ve suddenly become parent, psychiatrist, moneylender and health care provider for your household help. Altering your life to this degree to just get someone to cook meals and dust your house for you? Suddenly this doesn’t seem very attractive.
Also consider that you will spend a great part of your day working with people who don’t deliver on what they’ve promised to, and chasing people who routinely don’t show up when they’re supposed to.
If you’re at a point in your life where you’ve achieved independence, self-sufficiency and equanimity, do you really want to sacrifice these?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reason #3: The Schools Are Disappointing
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because major international companies have their offices in Bangalore, because vast numbers of college-educated specialists live in Bangalore, then its schools must also be great.
With a handful of exceptions, Bangalore schools range in quality from average to abysmal.
And the general quality of school teachers is among the worst I’ve seen or heard of. Not surprising, actually. Anyone who can walk upright and speak English can get a very well-paying job answering a telephone. With tea-boys at BPOs making as much as teachers and a high cost of living that does not make idealism economically viable, teaching is not the career choice of most smart people.
So the boom in Bangalore has ironically created a situation where there are so many better paying career options that there is actually a shortage of talented teachers at a time when the number of students has gone up due to massive migration and repatriation to the city.
There are 3 main types of schools available in Bangalore: the traditional schools, the international schools, and the new schools.
The Traditional Schools: These are the branded schools whose name everyone recognizes.
Indians moving back to India think: “I went to a no-frills traditional school, and they drilled me and helped me get those exam results I needed to study medicine/engineering/management. I managed to go to the U.S. and kick butt in college. Now I want my U.S.-citizen kids to go through the drill I couldn’t escape because, hey, it wasn’t too bad for me after all.
So what if there are 50-60 kids in a classroom? It’ll teach them to toughen up and appreciate the odds I had to overcome in life. They’ve become pampered softies abroad, thinking they can get hugs from teachers and ask them all the questions they want. Why, it’s good, old-fashioned cramming, mindless bowing to authority and leaping from exam to exam that got me where I am, and no better place to deliver that than a good, old-fashioned reputable school with a good track record.”
It is allegedly impossible to get admission to these schools because they have gargantuan waiting lists that parents signed with their blood before they even conceived their kids. However, offer a generous “donation”, drop a few names, and seats will miraculously become available.
The International Schools: For parents who don’t want to subject themselves and their children to the humiliation of seeking admission to a traditional school, and who have deep pockets, the so-called international schools are a lifesaver.
An international school should offer an international student body, an international teaching staff, an international curriculum and international-quality facilities. The existing international schools sometimes meet maybe one or two, and most often, none of these criteria. They do charge their parents astronomical dollar-equivalent fees comparable to elite private schools overseas, while paying their mostly Indian teachers slightly more than the local schools.
In terms of value, these schools are the ultimate rip-off. My advice: Save the money for college.
Gullible streams of NRIs and expatriates looking for continuity, and a more easygoing and familiar school environment for their children fall for the rolling campuses and soft-sell from these schools. What these parents don’t know, but find out gradually, is that the teachers who staff these schools have had most of their education and training in the traditional Indian system. A few weeks of token “training” or a week abroad does not change a mindset trained to impart knowledge through rote learning, exams and an authoritarian teaching style that is suited to a classroom where children are expected to be seen and not heard. These teachers are affronted when kids ask them questions ("How can I finish the syllabus if kids keep putting up their hands and interrupting me?").
The New Schools: These offer elements of both the international and the traditional schools. In general, they are less finicky about admissions than the traditional schools and have smaller class sizes. They tend to be located on the fringes of the city. Their fees tend to be higher than those of traditional schools, but much lower than those of international schools. They offer a range of sports and extra-curricular activities. They usually offer the traditional ICSE/CBSE curriculum, but without the numbing rigor. Some of these schools offer the Cambridge IGCSE as an option in high school.
With a handful of exceptions, Bangalore schools range in quality from average to abysmal.
And the general quality of school teachers is among the worst I’ve seen or heard of. Not surprising, actually. Anyone who can walk upright and speak English can get a very well-paying job answering a telephone. With tea-boys at BPOs making as much as teachers and a high cost of living that does not make idealism economically viable, teaching is not the career choice of most smart people.
So the boom in Bangalore has ironically created a situation where there are so many better paying career options that there is actually a shortage of talented teachers at a time when the number of students has gone up due to massive migration and repatriation to the city.
There are 3 main types of schools available in Bangalore: the traditional schools, the international schools, and the new schools.
The Traditional Schools: These are the branded schools whose name everyone recognizes.
Indians moving back to India think: “I went to a no-frills traditional school, and they drilled me and helped me get those exam results I needed to study medicine/engineering/management. I managed to go to the U.S. and kick butt in college. Now I want my U.S.-citizen kids to go through the drill I couldn’t escape because, hey, it wasn’t too bad for me after all.
So what if there are 50-60 kids in a classroom? It’ll teach them to toughen up and appreciate the odds I had to overcome in life. They’ve become pampered softies abroad, thinking they can get hugs from teachers and ask them all the questions they want. Why, it’s good, old-fashioned cramming, mindless bowing to authority and leaping from exam to exam that got me where I am, and no better place to deliver that than a good, old-fashioned reputable school with a good track record.”
It is allegedly impossible to get admission to these schools because they have gargantuan waiting lists that parents signed with their blood before they even conceived their kids. However, offer a generous “donation”, drop a few names, and seats will miraculously become available.
The International Schools: For parents who don’t want to subject themselves and their children to the humiliation of seeking admission to a traditional school, and who have deep pockets, the so-called international schools are a lifesaver.
An international school should offer an international student body, an international teaching staff, an international curriculum and international-quality facilities. The existing international schools sometimes meet maybe one or two, and most often, none of these criteria. They do charge their parents astronomical dollar-equivalent fees comparable to elite private schools overseas, while paying their mostly Indian teachers slightly more than the local schools.
In terms of value, these schools are the ultimate rip-off. My advice: Save the money for college.
Gullible streams of NRIs and expatriates looking for continuity, and a more easygoing and familiar school environment for their children fall for the rolling campuses and soft-sell from these schools. What these parents don’t know, but find out gradually, is that the teachers who staff these schools have had most of their education and training in the traditional Indian system. A few weeks of token “training” or a week abroad does not change a mindset trained to impart knowledge through rote learning, exams and an authoritarian teaching style that is suited to a classroom where children are expected to be seen and not heard. These teachers are affronted when kids ask them questions ("How can I finish the syllabus if kids keep putting up their hands and interrupting me?").
The New Schools: These offer elements of both the international and the traditional schools. In general, they are less finicky about admissions than the traditional schools and have smaller class sizes. They tend to be located on the fringes of the city. Their fees tend to be higher than those of traditional schools, but much lower than those of international schools. They offer a range of sports and extra-curricular activities. They usually offer the traditional ICSE/CBSE curriculum, but without the numbing rigor. Some of these schools offer the Cambridge IGCSE as an option in high school.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
A Shakedown on Gandhi's Birthday
On the Mahatma's birthday, the children had an important lesson on how our system of law and order functions. They saw Mom and Dad give in to a bully.
We were headed to Koshy's for lunch and took a left turn at a light just two blocks away from Gandhiji’s statue on Mahatma Gandhi Road. Our car was flagged down by a couple of policemen.
There were the usual hapless motorcyclists begging and bargaining for release. We pulled over and rolled down our windows. One of the cops sauntered to our car.
“You took a free left turn on the junction,” he said. “There is no free turn.”
We were certain the light had been green. In any case, there had been cars in front of us that had turned left on to the empty road, and so had we. We had done nothing as wrongful as blowing through a red light, which Bangaloreans routinely do whether the streets are empty or not.
All the cars in front of us and behind us were gone on the empty road. We were the only foolish ones to stop for a person in uniform.
We insisted we had not turned left on a red light. The cop demanded to see my husband’s licence. He looked disappointed that it was all legitimate. He looked at us: a family out for Saturday lunch. He looked at our kids, who had stopped reading their books and looked worried.
“You turned on red light,” the cop said. “If you go back, you will see.”
The shakedown was so pathetic and obvious. I would have laughed were I not seething. “But the lights have changed already, have they not …?” my husband said, incredulous and polite.
The cop looked deliberately at the licence again. He was reluctant to return it. “You have to pay something,” he insisted. Now he was getting to business. “Hundred rupees,” he said sticking his hand out. "For violation."
There was no question who was being violated, but we paid up. It was his word against ours so there was no winning this fight. And like any skilled extortionist, he gauged the amount was small enough for us to write off as an irritant not worth disrupting our day for.
He took the money and waved us on generously. There was no receipt for the “fine.”
"But we did nothing wrong ...!" the children protested. We told them this was an abuse of power that we could challenge successfully in a place where the government functions in a fair and transparent manner. Not in India.
On the Mahatma's birthday, my children witnessed for the first time something that happens every day millions of times across India. Currency notes embossed with Gandhi’s face and proclaiming "The truth always wins" are wrongfully extracted from the pockets of citizens by a breed of common bully called a government servant.
We were headed to Koshy's for lunch and took a left turn at a light just two blocks away from Gandhiji’s statue on Mahatma Gandhi Road. Our car was flagged down by a couple of policemen.
There were the usual hapless motorcyclists begging and bargaining for release. We pulled over and rolled down our windows. One of the cops sauntered to our car.
“You took a free left turn on the junction,” he said. “There is no free turn.”
We were certain the light had been green. In any case, there had been cars in front of us that had turned left on to the empty road, and so had we. We had done nothing as wrongful as blowing through a red light, which Bangaloreans routinely do whether the streets are empty or not.
All the cars in front of us and behind us were gone on the empty road. We were the only foolish ones to stop for a person in uniform.
We insisted we had not turned left on a red light. The cop demanded to see my husband’s licence. He looked disappointed that it was all legitimate. He looked at us: a family out for Saturday lunch. He looked at our kids, who had stopped reading their books and looked worried.
“You turned on red light,” the cop said. “If you go back, you will see.”
The shakedown was so pathetic and obvious. I would have laughed were I not seething. “But the lights have changed already, have they not …?” my husband said, incredulous and polite.
The cop looked deliberately at the licence again. He was reluctant to return it. “You have to pay something,” he insisted. Now he was getting to business. “Hundred rupees,” he said sticking his hand out. "For violation."
There was no question who was being violated, but we paid up. It was his word against ours so there was no winning this fight. And like any skilled extortionist, he gauged the amount was small enough for us to write off as an irritant not worth disrupting our day for.
He took the money and waved us on generously. There was no receipt for the “fine.”
"But we did nothing wrong ...!" the children protested. We told them this was an abuse of power that we could challenge successfully in a place where the government functions in a fair and transparent manner. Not in India.
On the Mahatma's birthday, my children witnessed for the first time something that happens every day millions of times across India. Currency notes embossed with Gandhi’s face and proclaiming "The truth always wins" are wrongfully extracted from the pockets of citizens by a breed of common bully called a government servant.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Lalbagh
Lalbagh is the Central Park of Bangalore. It is an island of more than 200 acres of trees and parks, surrounded by some of the city’s most congested neighborhoods.
Many people go to Lalbagh to see its absolutely unspectacular flower clock, or the glass house that hosts a kitschy flower show a few times a year. During the flower shows, tens of thousands of people line up to look at potted plants and carved vegetables, and leave kilograms of litter in their wake.
The flower show is something to do once, just to experience the flutter a city can go into over a bunch of flower pots, even as glorious, storied trees with pachyderm trunks tower quietly just yards away.
Lalbagh is best enjoyed when you think of it as a remnant of Bangalore’s vanishing past. The few benches in the park are taken by lovebirds turning their stiff, guilty backs to people strolling by and vendors selling roasted peanuts, puffed rice and sliced cucumbers. Climb the rock hill, said to be 3-billion years old, and catch a view of Bangalore’s skyline. Then take the path that does the outermost circuit of the park.
We passed a lake carpeted with lotus pads but boasting more plastic bottles than blossoms. We saw only three lotus flowers, and even these were a beautiful consolation. A delicate pink flower standing shyly on a greenish-blue stiletto of a stalk, still water and moving clouds in the sky. My husband points out the pearly sheen of the rain clouds gathering in the distance. Walking about amidst nature has us prospecting for beautiful things and spouting poetry unrehearsed.
The best part of Lalbagh is a chance to get close to its trees. Frowning guards materialize when you get close to the roses (which give the garden its name, "red garden") or look like you might be enjoying the grass. I don’t care for the pampered grass. The flowers have enough adorers to flirt with. I scout for the garden’s step-children: its marvellous, brooding trees.
My favorite are the Bombax trees, whose massive, rippling girths rise up into infinity. Like so many of India’s historical monuments, some of these old trees are carved with the initials of vandals. The names have grown bigger along with the diameters of these limbs. You can read these ugly tattoos meters away.
There is something menacing yet gentle about these Bombax trees. My children swore they were enchanted like the Whomping Willow encountered by Harry Potter. They patted the tentacled roots with wary delight, as though petting an animal.
It is easy to believe there is something mysterious about these powerful trees. Maybe they are petrified rakshasas clawing out into the air in a futile effort to escape. I tried to play a fast-motion movie in my head where a seed churns out a stalk that dances up to the sky for more than a hundred years, getting thicker as it flings its branches out in magnificent mudras up towards God.
Or maybe it’s like witnessing Sita’s fire ordeal. “Have I not endured enough?” the trees beseech the skies. “Take me away from this wretched city that rapes me and lusts for metal and concrete.”
Many people go to Lalbagh to see its absolutely unspectacular flower clock, or the glass house that hosts a kitschy flower show a few times a year. During the flower shows, tens of thousands of people line up to look at potted plants and carved vegetables, and leave kilograms of litter in their wake.
The flower show is something to do once, just to experience the flutter a city can go into over a bunch of flower pots, even as glorious, storied trees with pachyderm trunks tower quietly just yards away.
Lalbagh is best enjoyed when you think of it as a remnant of Bangalore’s vanishing past. The few benches in the park are taken by lovebirds turning their stiff, guilty backs to people strolling by and vendors selling roasted peanuts, puffed rice and sliced cucumbers. Climb the rock hill, said to be 3-billion years old, and catch a view of Bangalore’s skyline. Then take the path that does the outermost circuit of the park.
We passed a lake carpeted with lotus pads but boasting more plastic bottles than blossoms. We saw only three lotus flowers, and even these were a beautiful consolation. A delicate pink flower standing shyly on a greenish-blue stiletto of a stalk, still water and moving clouds in the sky. My husband points out the pearly sheen of the rain clouds gathering in the distance. Walking about amidst nature has us prospecting for beautiful things and spouting poetry unrehearsed.
The best part of Lalbagh is a chance to get close to its trees. Frowning guards materialize when you get close to the roses (which give the garden its name, "red garden") or look like you might be enjoying the grass. I don’t care for the pampered grass. The flowers have enough adorers to flirt with. I scout for the garden’s step-children: its marvellous, brooding trees.
My favorite are the Bombax trees, whose massive, rippling girths rise up into infinity. Like so many of India’s historical monuments, some of these old trees are carved with the initials of vandals. The names have grown bigger along with the diameters of these limbs. You can read these ugly tattoos meters away.
There is something menacing yet gentle about these Bombax trees. My children swore they were enchanted like the Whomping Willow encountered by Harry Potter. They patted the tentacled roots with wary delight, as though petting an animal.
It is easy to believe there is something mysterious about these powerful trees. Maybe they are petrified rakshasas clawing out into the air in a futile effort to escape. I tried to play a fast-motion movie in my head where a seed churns out a stalk that dances up to the sky for more than a hundred years, getting thicker as it flings its branches out in magnificent mudras up towards God.
Or maybe it’s like witnessing Sita’s fire ordeal. “Have I not endured enough?” the trees beseech the skies. “Take me away from this wretched city that rapes me and lusts for metal and concrete.”
Monday, September 28, 2009
Reason #2: The Traffic is Mind-Numbing
What happens when you get small amounts of road space, exploding numbers of new cars, imbecile two-wheelers, maniacal truck and bus drivers all jostling for space, cutting each other off and breaking every rule of driving and road courtesy? Stand by any intersection and observe the mayhem.
There are an estimated 30 lakh vehicles jostling for 7,000 km of road space in Bangalore. And 200 new cars are registered every day (along with hundreds of other vehicles), adding to this mess.
No one observes the rules of driving. Lane markers and traffic lights are wishful reminders of decorum that few drivers care to observe. In reality, everyone drives where they please, stops wherever they want to at any time, and turns anywhere. Drivers on the far left of a road can swipe to take a right turn. Drivers who face an obstruction think nothing of suddenly flowing into your space.
Car horns and brakes are the most frequently used parts of a car, followed by the steering wheel. Turn signals are rarely used. Mirrors are protruding nuisances that are folded in.
What you may have learned in driving school is seldom needed or used on the road. The city’s drivers have devised their own set of signals. A couple of squeezes on the highbeams indicates, “I’m headed at you and am taking your space, so give way.” A wrist stuck out and wobbling in the air indicates, “You can squeeze past my side.” Elbows and foreams may be used to turn a steering wheel so hands can be freed for more critical functions such as talking on the cellphone and checking that the family jewels are intact.
Bangalore has awful roads. Sidewalks are often dug up so pedestrians share the road with vehicles. The majestic trees that form a canopied arch on many roads are daily ripped out to widen roads. The city has tried to add dozens of flyovers and ready-made underpasses (called "magic boxes") to ease traffic. These are so narrow that they actually cause traffic to freeze instead of moving it along.
The most traversed roads are either dug up to retro-fit an antediluvian Metro rail system, or are dumped with re-routed traffic. The city's roads are among the worst I've ever seen. I've seen better roads in Liberia -- and they've had a long-running civil war where grade schoolers with guns run the show. Whenever CNN airs a report on a bombing in Baghdad, I shout: "They have better roads!"
The IT industry works because it is able to wire most of its output to every end of the world. Of course, no one knows that these paragons of efficiency who answer, “Hello, this is Sam. How may I help you?” risk life and limb to get to work, and put their personal health and sanity on the line every day so they can fix customer gripes continents away.
Think of how many hours of your and your school-children’s week are spent going to work and school. Then be sobered by what fraction of your primary school-aged child’s life is spent breathing toxic gases and witnessing human incompetence on a grand scale every day, to and from school.
There are an estimated 30 lakh vehicles jostling for 7,000 km of road space in Bangalore. And 200 new cars are registered every day (along with hundreds of other vehicles), adding to this mess.
No one observes the rules of driving. Lane markers and traffic lights are wishful reminders of decorum that few drivers care to observe. In reality, everyone drives where they please, stops wherever they want to at any time, and turns anywhere. Drivers on the far left of a road can swipe to take a right turn. Drivers who face an obstruction think nothing of suddenly flowing into your space.
Car horns and brakes are the most frequently used parts of a car, followed by the steering wheel. Turn signals are rarely used. Mirrors are protruding nuisances that are folded in.
What you may have learned in driving school is seldom needed or used on the road. The city’s drivers have devised their own set of signals. A couple of squeezes on the highbeams indicates, “I’m headed at you and am taking your space, so give way.” A wrist stuck out and wobbling in the air indicates, “You can squeeze past my side.” Elbows and foreams may be used to turn a steering wheel so hands can be freed for more critical functions such as talking on the cellphone and checking that the family jewels are intact.
Bangalore has awful roads. Sidewalks are often dug up so pedestrians share the road with vehicles. The majestic trees that form a canopied arch on many roads are daily ripped out to widen roads. The city has tried to add dozens of flyovers and ready-made underpasses (called "magic boxes") to ease traffic. These are so narrow that they actually cause traffic to freeze instead of moving it along.
The most traversed roads are either dug up to retro-fit an antediluvian Metro rail system, or are dumped with re-routed traffic. The city's roads are among the worst I've ever seen. I've seen better roads in Liberia -- and they've had a long-running civil war where grade schoolers with guns run the show. Whenever CNN airs a report on a bombing in Baghdad, I shout: "They have better roads!"
The IT industry works because it is able to wire most of its output to every end of the world. Of course, no one knows that these paragons of efficiency who answer, “Hello, this is Sam. How may I help you?” risk life and limb to get to work, and put their personal health and sanity on the line every day so they can fix customer gripes continents away.
Think of how many hours of your and your school-children’s week are spent going to work and school. Then be sobered by what fraction of your primary school-aged child’s life is spent breathing toxic gases and witnessing human incompetence on a grand scale every day, to and from school.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
MTR: The Emperor's New Dosas
The Mavalli Tiffin Room, reverently known as MTR, is one of those legendary Bangalore institutions that anyone who loves the city or wants to learn to love it is urged to go on gastronomic pilgrimages to.
Queues start forming shortly after the eatery opens in the morning, and crowds throng outside at lunch time. Bangalore is a city that does not have very many sights to see, and so MTR figured high on our list of places to go to.
We made it for family breakfast one morning.
Flooded drains formed a moat around the seedy building that houses the restaurant. We wobbled like tightrope walkers over a makeshift bridge of broken bricks and entered the temple of high cuisine. Many of the most awesome eateries in India look forbiddingly dreary or ordinary. The grimy interior did not deter us. These people have been too busy cooking up heavenly meals for decades to think of lowly details like sweeping and dusting.
People wait for a table, eat quickly and leave. There are no plaster of paris curly ornaments on the ceiling or anything as pretentious as a cummerbund on a waiter or a folded napkin on the sticky tables. The waiters wear lungis folded up and tied around their hips, and they don’t offer you a menu. They are too busy zipping from table to table, and usually neither receive nor expect tips. You choose from the dozen items the kitchen has on offer at the time you order.
MTR is like the Soup Nazi in The Seinfeld Show. You show up, and you wait humbly and politely eat what they give you, in the manner they choose to serve it, because they know their food best and you’d better be grateful to be getting some of it. You don’t ask for sambar if they care not to serve it. There was none at 10 a.m. “No sambar,” the waiter said disapprovingly when some was requested.
The dosas we ordered were tepid and already wilting. They looked practically burned. I glanced at other people’s dosas. All dark brown. The rava idlis, supposedly invented here, were cold and bouncy. The kharabhath was over-seasoned, but the only item colorfully garnished with a tomato slice. The gulab jamuns were warm dough pellets with a metallic aftertaste. I wonder how this restaurant got its name as a food purist.
We had asked for coffee to be brought along with our meal and offered several reminders to our waiter, who put his hand up every time he walked by, nodding as though he were quelling an annoying child. The coffee was brought at the end of the meal, when it is customarily drunk. We sipped it gratefully. After all that below-average, pulpy food, the coffee tasted honest and robust.
This was my second sampling of food at MTR, and I rate its food as unremarkable to downright awful. I can forgive a bad meal at a restaurant. But two unrelentingly awful meals at a shrine where I had to grovel to get a seat? I felt scammed at having to endure a long wait and indifferent service for food even an okay cook like me would scorn to produce. What I can’t understand is that thousands of people line up to shove this food in and still praise the lord for blessing Bangalore with MTR. I just don’t get it.
I know lots of people who say in praise of MTR: “I’ve been eating there for 20 years and the food always tastes the same.” After two equally wretched meals there, I can believe that there’s no variation in the quality of the food and don’t plan to go back unless struck by desperation or dementia.
MTR has sold its venerable brand name to a Norwegian food company that now mass markets its high quality masalas and ready to eat mixes globally. Maybe the restaurant should switch to using these in its own kitchen.
You might wonder if I have something against South Indian udupi food. I love idlis and dosas. The steam curling off fluffy idlis on a plate, the crisp, golden dosa that opens to reveal its lacy, bubbled inside (sounds like Victorian underwear, but never mind!) can get me all excited about tucking into a meal. The mustard and chilis in the sambar set off a loud but pleasingly familiar argument with your tongue, while the coconut chutney calms it down. A steel tumbler of filter coffee is good down to the chicory-flecked sediment. It is a flavorful meal.
Having said that, I must confess a politically incorrect puzzlement I’ve long harbored about South Indian food. How can people who eat idlis and dosas and rasam practically every day, sometimes all through the day, step out of their homes and purposely seek out restaurants where they can find more idlis and dosas to order, meal after meal, day after day, month after month, and disturbingly, hop with ecstasy when they do find that dosa joint (gasp!) at the end of the block? I don’t get it. The food they get all poetic about is practically identical to what they eat at home all the time.
It’s comfort food, and I can understand the tears that may run down a deprived cheek when months of separation from idli and dosa ends with a chance encounter with a perfect hing-laced sambar bubbling in a styrofoam bowl on an icy Chicago morning. You think of the plump squeeze of your mother’s hand telling you to have one more dosa, you can hear your father sucking drumsticks noisily with his teeth. After days of boring cornflakes and waxy bagels and bony toast, you want to dig into idli and dosa and feel your sinuses sting gratefully. Moisture courses down your eyes and your nose and you don't give a damn how you look because your body has all its senses engaged in making some heavenly food disappear. You don't say through pursed lips, "Pass the apricot jelly, Nigel." You're busy making indelicate, slurping history of your idli-dosa combo. I get that.
But to crave a dosa, that same dosa, because the last one you had was in the morning ...?
Can comfort food be so comforting that it can anesthetize you into such a state of zombie gratitude that you can’t snap out of it for decades? I had to physically fight the urge to stand up on a chair at MTR that morning and shout, “It’s okay, people. It’s okay to say it. This food is pretty bad.”
Maybe people just keep going back again and again, more than 20 years, to see if they can finally get a good meal at the place. I’m not going to be one of them.
Queues start forming shortly after the eatery opens in the morning, and crowds throng outside at lunch time. Bangalore is a city that does not have very many sights to see, and so MTR figured high on our list of places to go to.
We made it for family breakfast one morning.
Flooded drains formed a moat around the seedy building that houses the restaurant. We wobbled like tightrope walkers over a makeshift bridge of broken bricks and entered the temple of high cuisine. Many of the most awesome eateries in India look forbiddingly dreary or ordinary. The grimy interior did not deter us. These people have been too busy cooking up heavenly meals for decades to think of lowly details like sweeping and dusting.
People wait for a table, eat quickly and leave. There are no plaster of paris curly ornaments on the ceiling or anything as pretentious as a cummerbund on a waiter or a folded napkin on the sticky tables. The waiters wear lungis folded up and tied around their hips, and they don’t offer you a menu. They are too busy zipping from table to table, and usually neither receive nor expect tips. You choose from the dozen items the kitchen has on offer at the time you order.
MTR is like the Soup Nazi in The Seinfeld Show. You show up, and you wait humbly and politely eat what they give you, in the manner they choose to serve it, because they know their food best and you’d better be grateful to be getting some of it. You don’t ask for sambar if they care not to serve it. There was none at 10 a.m. “No sambar,” the waiter said disapprovingly when some was requested.
The dosas we ordered were tepid and already wilting. They looked practically burned. I glanced at other people’s dosas. All dark brown. The rava idlis, supposedly invented here, were cold and bouncy. The kharabhath was over-seasoned, but the only item colorfully garnished with a tomato slice. The gulab jamuns were warm dough pellets with a metallic aftertaste. I wonder how this restaurant got its name as a food purist.
We had asked for coffee to be brought along with our meal and offered several reminders to our waiter, who put his hand up every time he walked by, nodding as though he were quelling an annoying child. The coffee was brought at the end of the meal, when it is customarily drunk. We sipped it gratefully. After all that below-average, pulpy food, the coffee tasted honest and robust.
This was my second sampling of food at MTR, and I rate its food as unremarkable to downright awful. I can forgive a bad meal at a restaurant. But two unrelentingly awful meals at a shrine where I had to grovel to get a seat? I felt scammed at having to endure a long wait and indifferent service for food even an okay cook like me would scorn to produce. What I can’t understand is that thousands of people line up to shove this food in and still praise the lord for blessing Bangalore with MTR. I just don’t get it.
I know lots of people who say in praise of MTR: “I’ve been eating there for 20 years and the food always tastes the same.” After two equally wretched meals there, I can believe that there’s no variation in the quality of the food and don’t plan to go back unless struck by desperation or dementia.
MTR has sold its venerable brand name to a Norwegian food company that now mass markets its high quality masalas and ready to eat mixes globally. Maybe the restaurant should switch to using these in its own kitchen.
You might wonder if I have something against South Indian udupi food. I love idlis and dosas. The steam curling off fluffy idlis on a plate, the crisp, golden dosa that opens to reveal its lacy, bubbled inside (sounds like Victorian underwear, but never mind!) can get me all excited about tucking into a meal. The mustard and chilis in the sambar set off a loud but pleasingly familiar argument with your tongue, while the coconut chutney calms it down. A steel tumbler of filter coffee is good down to the chicory-flecked sediment. It is a flavorful meal.
Having said that, I must confess a politically incorrect puzzlement I’ve long harbored about South Indian food. How can people who eat idlis and dosas and rasam practically every day, sometimes all through the day, step out of their homes and purposely seek out restaurants where they can find more idlis and dosas to order, meal after meal, day after day, month after month, and disturbingly, hop with ecstasy when they do find that dosa joint (gasp!) at the end of the block? I don’t get it. The food they get all poetic about is practically identical to what they eat at home all the time.
It’s comfort food, and I can understand the tears that may run down a deprived cheek when months of separation from idli and dosa ends with a chance encounter with a perfect hing-laced sambar bubbling in a styrofoam bowl on an icy Chicago morning. You think of the plump squeeze of your mother’s hand telling you to have one more dosa, you can hear your father sucking drumsticks noisily with his teeth. After days of boring cornflakes and waxy bagels and bony toast, you want to dig into idli and dosa and feel your sinuses sting gratefully. Moisture courses down your eyes and your nose and you don't give a damn how you look because your body has all its senses engaged in making some heavenly food disappear. You don't say through pursed lips, "Pass the apricot jelly, Nigel." You're busy making indelicate, slurping history of your idli-dosa combo. I get that.
But to crave a dosa, that same dosa, because the last one you had was in the morning ...?
Can comfort food be so comforting that it can anesthetize you into such a state of zombie gratitude that you can’t snap out of it for decades? I had to physically fight the urge to stand up on a chair at MTR that morning and shout, “It’s okay, people. It’s okay to say it. This food is pretty bad.”
Maybe people just keep going back again and again, more than 20 years, to see if they can finally get a good meal at the place. I’m not going to be one of them.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced
I’m not comparing Bangalore to Mumbai or Shanghai or New York here. I’m comparing Bangalore to Bangalore.
Single family homes are rentable in multiples of 1 lakh a month unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, have lousy road access, arrange to pump your own borewell water and generate your own electric power. A 3-bedroom apartment in a compound with recreational facilities should cost you a third to half of that.
The rent bubble has burst, and one can now rent a small villa in Palm Meadows, an upscale gated community, for Rs. 40,000 a month, instead of a lakh a year ago. Homeowners whose rent expectations zoomed from Rs. 20,000 to 2-3 lakhs are now cooling their heels as there is an oversupply of housing.
Gated communities at least offer on-site recreational facilities that compensate for the utter lack of cleanliness or facilities outside their walls. But a dekko will bring the shocking realization that many of the so-called luxury housing options available are little better than low income housing projects in the United States or Europe.
Typically, what you pay for is just a roof over your head because the city does not have much to offer in terms of civic amenities or quality of life.
That homeowners and agents demand extortionate rates isn’t any tribute to the superior quality of the housing on offer or the attractiveness of Bangalore as a city. For rents that are higher than in Palo Alto, Calif., where the original Silicon Valley is, Bangalore offers dug up footpaths, unswept streets, open drains, and daily chaos, making it a destination for people who have to be here because their jobs are located here. Not only does the housing exclude any white goods, it does not include good (and free!) schools, rolling parks and ribbon-smooth highways. It does include horrendous traffic jams and a high probability that your principal source of water will be tanker trucks bringing pesticide-laced ground water from the city’s dwindling borewells to your building. All in all, a laughable price tag for the only good thing on offer: the weather.
Bangalore’s topsy-turvy housing prices are all about supply and demand. There was a huge demand for high-end housing from 2004 for NRIs and expats moving to Bangalore. Whitefield became an attractive location because villas with on-site club facilities were available within a 30 to 45 minute drive to two popular international schools (TISB and Indus), and close to ITPL and its vicinity, where the offices of IT majors are located, as well as to the old HAL airport.
With the housing bust already here, thousands of apartments built to lure property speculators now lie vacant in Whitefield. Villas are quietly put on sale. Gone is the bidding frenzy of prospective renters and the queues of buyers willing to shell out several crores for villas they built for Rs. 20 to 40 lakhs.
The rental market has cooled too. Landlords who salivated at the prospect of luring a gullible expatriate to pay them 2-5 lakh a month in Palm Meadows, with a 15-month, interest-free deposit now have villas lying vacant for months. Gone are the days when they coldly evicted tenants in the middle of leases because some agent promised a company lease that would pay them double.
The new airport is in the city’s north, as are some of the newer international schools. Although still very much an expat ghetto, Palm Meadows is no longer the only option for new expatriate families. More housing is available in every neighborhood of Bangalore. And traffic jams have doubled the peak hour commute from Whitefield to M.G. Road from 45 minutes four years ago to an hour and a half on a good day. Electronics City to the airport is a good 2 hours. A windfall doesn’t last forever.
Apartment prices are also a third to half of what they used to be a few years ago. But these are a bargain only if you think your dream home should come with: No zoning regulations, so you can have a shop or restaurant open practically anywhere in a residential area. Traffic noise that lasts into the wee hours of the morning. Walking on streets that have choked gutters, no sidewalks and no safe junctions to cross at.
The gloriously spreading trees along the sides of roads that the Garden City got its name from are quickly being cut down, and there is rubble and trash everywhere. Metal barricades and knee-high medians stretch for kilometers, with no consideration for pedestrians and school children. Motorcycle riders think footpaths are an extra lane for them to drive on. Streets get flooded after a few centimetres of rain. People fall into overflowing drains and drown every monsoon and yet nothing changes.
All these make Bangalore an ugly, decaying and unsafe city.
Single family homes are rentable in multiples of 1 lakh a month unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, have lousy road access, arrange to pump your own borewell water and generate your own electric power. A 3-bedroom apartment in a compound with recreational facilities should cost you a third to half of that.
The rent bubble has burst, and one can now rent a small villa in Palm Meadows, an upscale gated community, for Rs. 40,000 a month, instead of a lakh a year ago. Homeowners whose rent expectations zoomed from Rs. 20,000 to 2-3 lakhs are now cooling their heels as there is an oversupply of housing.
Gated communities at least offer on-site recreational facilities that compensate for the utter lack of cleanliness or facilities outside their walls. But a dekko will bring the shocking realization that many of the so-called luxury housing options available are little better than low income housing projects in the United States or Europe.
Typically, what you pay for is just a roof over your head because the city does not have much to offer in terms of civic amenities or quality of life.
That homeowners and agents demand extortionate rates isn’t any tribute to the superior quality of the housing on offer or the attractiveness of Bangalore as a city. For rents that are higher than in Palo Alto, Calif., where the original Silicon Valley is, Bangalore offers dug up footpaths, unswept streets, open drains, and daily chaos, making it a destination for people who have to be here because their jobs are located here. Not only does the housing exclude any white goods, it does not include good (and free!) schools, rolling parks and ribbon-smooth highways. It does include horrendous traffic jams and a high probability that your principal source of water will be tanker trucks bringing pesticide-laced ground water from the city’s dwindling borewells to your building. All in all, a laughable price tag for the only good thing on offer: the weather.
Bangalore’s topsy-turvy housing prices are all about supply and demand. There was a huge demand for high-end housing from 2004 for NRIs and expats moving to Bangalore. Whitefield became an attractive location because villas with on-site club facilities were available within a 30 to 45 minute drive to two popular international schools (TISB and Indus), and close to ITPL and its vicinity, where the offices of IT majors are located, as well as to the old HAL airport.
With the housing bust already here, thousands of apartments built to lure property speculators now lie vacant in Whitefield. Villas are quietly put on sale. Gone is the bidding frenzy of prospective renters and the queues of buyers willing to shell out several crores for villas they built for Rs. 20 to 40 lakhs.
The rental market has cooled too. Landlords who salivated at the prospect of luring a gullible expatriate to pay them 2-5 lakh a month in Palm Meadows, with a 15-month, interest-free deposit now have villas lying vacant for months. Gone are the days when they coldly evicted tenants in the middle of leases because some agent promised a company lease that would pay them double.
The new airport is in the city’s north, as are some of the newer international schools. Although still very much an expat ghetto, Palm Meadows is no longer the only option for new expatriate families. More housing is available in every neighborhood of Bangalore. And traffic jams have doubled the peak hour commute from Whitefield to M.G. Road from 45 minutes four years ago to an hour and a half on a good day. Electronics City to the airport is a good 2 hours. A windfall doesn’t last forever.
Apartment prices are also a third to half of what they used to be a few years ago. But these are a bargain only if you think your dream home should come with: No zoning regulations, so you can have a shop or restaurant open practically anywhere in a residential area. Traffic noise that lasts into the wee hours of the morning. Walking on streets that have choked gutters, no sidewalks and no safe junctions to cross at.
The gloriously spreading trees along the sides of roads that the Garden City got its name from are quickly being cut down, and there is rubble and trash everywhere. Metal barricades and knee-high medians stretch for kilometers, with no consideration for pedestrians and school children. Motorcycle riders think footpaths are an extra lane for them to drive on. Streets get flooded after a few centimetres of rain. People fall into overflowing drains and drown every monsoon and yet nothing changes.
All these make Bangalore an ugly, decaying and unsafe city.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Top Ten Reasons Not to Move to Bangalore
Packing up your family and moving to Bangalore because this is Silicon Valley with the same salubrious weather and a lower cost of living? Whatever your company’s HR propagandist or your relocation agent tells you, brace yourself for unpleasant surprises.
This city has a king-size ego, and not much to offer in terms of work, family life or lifestyle. So think twice about altering your life plans to accommodate this city.
The enduring lesson I’ve learnt: You’ll have to sacrifice a lot to accommodate this city, but it won’t do much to accommodate you – not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is itself in tatters.
Here’s my honest and opinionated assessment of Bangalore that will help you factor in all the real pros and cons of moving to this city.
Next post:
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced.
This city has a king-size ego, and not much to offer in terms of work, family life or lifestyle. So think twice about altering your life plans to accommodate this city.
The enduring lesson I’ve learnt: You’ll have to sacrifice a lot to accommodate this city, but it won’t do much to accommodate you – not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is itself in tatters.
Here’s my honest and opinionated assessment of Bangalore that will help you factor in all the real pros and cons of moving to this city.
Next post:
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Hari 2: More Tales of Our Garden
The sparse monsoon is beginning to show on the brown grass. The rain has been absent and so has Hari the gardener.
I can see weeds propagating in comfortable patches, like they don’t expect to be disturbed. The leaves on the roses are chewed through. There are aphids on the guava tree. The leaves on the jasmine and hibiscus are curling unhappily from some invasion.
I’ve long suspected that Hari has no real hands-on knowledge of plants. His horticultural skills are limited to sweeping fallen leaves and tonsuring the grass when it becomes overgrown. He claims he grew up on a farm but I find it hard to believe he is a son of the soil.
I have to show him how to prune bushes and transplant saplings. I have to pull off aphids and squeeze them to show him that it isn't a gust of "bad air" that has my jasmine leaves shriveling. He cannot identify common weeds or secretly collaborates with them. “Oh, you don’t want these flowers?’’ he’ll say. I tell him the plant in question is a non-flowering weed that has now grown to over a foot high and is multiplying itself. “Na-ah,” he’ll say mysteriously. “Wait some more. It’s not a weed. It’ll give flowers.”
Hari colludes with weeds until they overrun the garden. Then he announces the garden will die without herbicides. I deliver an ultimatum and no herbicides. Then one day Hari recruits his wife, cousins and neighbors to squat in little circles and stab the grass with weed-pullers that look like big flat-pin screwdrivers. Piles of weeds, enough to stock a morbid florist for weeks, are displayed as trophies of his unappreciated devotion to our garden.
We go through this dramatic routine at the end of every month. Then Hari goes on his weed-pulling frenzy so that he can avoid being ticked off and threatened with unemployment when he shows up to collect his pay.
I’ve felt tempted to get another gardener. But I feel responsible for Hari. He has four children to raise in the city and a mother in his village home he sends money to because none of his brothers help her out. He shows up regularly and is honest and good-natured. If I replace him, the new guy could be a jerk and Hari’s kids might have to drop out of school because he certainly won’t be able to pay their tuition fees.
He is clueless about his work, but at least earnest. So it would be fair to say my compassion for our gardener has come at the expense of my compassion for our ailing garden.
Hari has a single, undeviating diagnosis for everything that ails our garden at any time of the year: Kida (bugs, worms).
Kida hiding under the ground are eating the roots of the grass. Kida are eating the leaves that are punctured with holes. Kida are sabotaging his work.
Hari also has one same magical prescription for banning all these ills: "Yirya complice" and "por-eight".
The first time he made this request, I asked him again and again what these were. He couldn't spell them or write them in a language I understood. "Medicine, madam," he would repeat as I shook my head uncomprehendingly. "Medicine for plants. Haven't you used it ever?"
Finally, I decided to drive to a seed and fertilizer shop nearby with him so he could show me what these were.
The shop was divided in two. The glass-fronted half stocked mobile phones. The open half sold farm supplies.
The shop reeked of death and disfigurement. My eyes stung and I could feel minutes peeling off my life span as I scanned the stock.
There were bags and sacks of chemicals with skull and bones symbols and serious health warnings. It was a mini-mart peddling poisons in pellets, powders and bottles. The contents all cautioned they are to be mixed in very small concentrations and handled with protective clothing and masks. Yet laborers who apply these lethal chemicals are often barefoot and have obviously not been supplied basic protective gear by their employers.
That is how easily you can shop death in India. It's practically as easy as buying handguns in America.
In a farm store, you don't show any IDs and you can buy anything toxic that takes your fancy: Malathion, DDT, any of the polysyllabically named poisons that are banned in the United States and Europe, are all available cheaply.
Hari picked out what he wanted: Urea complex and Phorate.
I read the labels and had the store clerk put them back. Instead, I bought a bag of compost.
Hari was downcast. I had chosen kida over him. “All your neighbors are using medicines,” he pleaded as we loaded the compost in the trunk of my car.
“These are not medicines,” I interrupted righteously. “They are poisons.”
“How can that be madam? Can the government allow the selling of poison?” I marvelled at his such faith in India's government and let him know we were done shopping.
Back home, I Googled Hari’s wish list of chemicals. Phorate is a relative of nerve gas. Urea compounds are used to fertilize soils but high concentrations can irritate the skin, eyes and respiratory tract.
There are many important reasons not to buy them. Hari’s health. My children playing ball with their friends. The birds that visit my garden.
Hari has come around to accept my irrational dislike for his "medicines" and I've grown to accept his inability to tell desirable vegetation apart from weeds.
Brown is the color of my garden’s good health this year. I’ll pretend the subdued looking grass is a sign of the fall colors I miss.
I can see weeds propagating in comfortable patches, like they don’t expect to be disturbed. The leaves on the roses are chewed through. There are aphids on the guava tree. The leaves on the jasmine and hibiscus are curling unhappily from some invasion.
I’ve long suspected that Hari has no real hands-on knowledge of plants. His horticultural skills are limited to sweeping fallen leaves and tonsuring the grass when it becomes overgrown. He claims he grew up on a farm but I find it hard to believe he is a son of the soil.
I have to show him how to prune bushes and transplant saplings. I have to pull off aphids and squeeze them to show him that it isn't a gust of "bad air" that has my jasmine leaves shriveling. He cannot identify common weeds or secretly collaborates with them. “Oh, you don’t want these flowers?’’ he’ll say. I tell him the plant in question is a non-flowering weed that has now grown to over a foot high and is multiplying itself. “Na-ah,” he’ll say mysteriously. “Wait some more. It’s not a weed. It’ll give flowers.”
Hari colludes with weeds until they overrun the garden. Then he announces the garden will die without herbicides. I deliver an ultimatum and no herbicides. Then one day Hari recruits his wife, cousins and neighbors to squat in little circles and stab the grass with weed-pullers that look like big flat-pin screwdrivers. Piles of weeds, enough to stock a morbid florist for weeks, are displayed as trophies of his unappreciated devotion to our garden.
We go through this dramatic routine at the end of every month. Then Hari goes on his weed-pulling frenzy so that he can avoid being ticked off and threatened with unemployment when he shows up to collect his pay.
I’ve felt tempted to get another gardener. But I feel responsible for Hari. He has four children to raise in the city and a mother in his village home he sends money to because none of his brothers help her out. He shows up regularly and is honest and good-natured. If I replace him, the new guy could be a jerk and Hari’s kids might have to drop out of school because he certainly won’t be able to pay their tuition fees.
He is clueless about his work, but at least earnest. So it would be fair to say my compassion for our gardener has come at the expense of my compassion for our ailing garden.
Hari has a single, undeviating diagnosis for everything that ails our garden at any time of the year: Kida (bugs, worms).
Kida hiding under the ground are eating the roots of the grass. Kida are eating the leaves that are punctured with holes. Kida are sabotaging his work.
Hari also has one same magical prescription for banning all these ills: "Yirya complice" and "por-eight".
The first time he made this request, I asked him again and again what these were. He couldn't spell them or write them in a language I understood. "Medicine, madam," he would repeat as I shook my head uncomprehendingly. "Medicine for plants. Haven't you used it ever?"
Finally, I decided to drive to a seed and fertilizer shop nearby with him so he could show me what these were.
The shop was divided in two. The glass-fronted half stocked mobile phones. The open half sold farm supplies.
The shop reeked of death and disfigurement. My eyes stung and I could feel minutes peeling off my life span as I scanned the stock.
There were bags and sacks of chemicals with skull and bones symbols and serious health warnings. It was a mini-mart peddling poisons in pellets, powders and bottles. The contents all cautioned they are to be mixed in very small concentrations and handled with protective clothing and masks. Yet laborers who apply these lethal chemicals are often barefoot and have obviously not been supplied basic protective gear by their employers.
That is how easily you can shop death in India. It's practically as easy as buying handguns in America.
In a farm store, you don't show any IDs and you can buy anything toxic that takes your fancy: Malathion, DDT, any of the polysyllabically named poisons that are banned in the United States and Europe, are all available cheaply.
Hari picked out what he wanted: Urea complex and Phorate.
I read the labels and had the store clerk put them back. Instead, I bought a bag of compost.
Hari was downcast. I had chosen kida over him. “All your neighbors are using medicines,” he pleaded as we loaded the compost in the trunk of my car.
“These are not medicines,” I interrupted righteously. “They are poisons.”
“How can that be madam? Can the government allow the selling of poison?” I marvelled at his such faith in India's government and let him know we were done shopping.
Back home, I Googled Hari’s wish list of chemicals. Phorate is a relative of nerve gas. Urea compounds are used to fertilize soils but high concentrations can irritate the skin, eyes and respiratory tract.
There are many important reasons not to buy them. Hari’s health. My children playing ball with their friends. The birds that visit my garden.
Hari has come around to accept my irrational dislike for his "medicines" and I've grown to accept his inability to tell desirable vegetation apart from weeds.
Brown is the color of my garden’s good health this year. I’ll pretend the subdued looking grass is a sign of the fall colors I miss.
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