Mes Secrets Inconnus

Friday, the day of the week where we treat our stomach to some food which is not cooked in our home kitchens. This time we planned to make a quickie and headed to the Punjab Rasoi @ RT nagar. The Punjab Rasoi is a nice place for north Indian dishes and a great hang out for lunch and dinner for the young crowds and office executives.Its run by a nice family husband and wife who are i think more popular as uncle and aunty for the regulars. The place has also nice door delivery service. And while we were  there, there were a number of take away's, so i guess it must be great place for people, mostly for the food's taste.  I did not get a chance to taste the non veg food, but from the taste of veg, i am sure it would rock. A great value for money.And you must try the aam pani :-)  Must go place if u like good Punjabi food and north Indian fare.

A pitiful city. The construction and development has rendered the "Garden city" title redundant. There are other things that will make this so called global face of India in its worst best.

1. Air that is so seriously thick with the vehicle smoke all through out the year. I bet if you can find cure for skin diseases in bengaluru, you will be making more money that the cricketers.
2. Roads that are so pathetically bad that your back will remember them for long.
3. Auto drivers who take the prize for being the most corrupt and discourteous in the entire country.
4. Drivers who flout traffic rules like it is their birthright.
5. Traffic congestions and long drives.
6. Unkept parks and foot paths
7. One way streets that will make your head spin
8. Civic sense that is probably the lowest compared to all cities
9. Govt that is corrupt, ineffective and devoid of any vision for the city.

All said and done, i am a hardcore bengalurean and i hope my random acts towards this place will help retain its lost glory.

To start off, while driving with TC boy the other day, i clicked these pics at the Windsor circle. It was around 6 pm, the weather as usual was at its best.

A tired mind, burning eyes, scheduled late night call that can extend to any time and never ending task.  I am sure most of you have been through this. Well’ i am not here to discuss these. But what i am gonna tell you is – how to kill all these using just one missile. Visit Chetty’s corner. This one is on the Kumara Park road, west to be precise. You never know, there are lot of cheap imitators in  bengalooru who can fake such outlets. But this one is quite popular. Its a favorite hangout for many college guys & gals. There is nothing special about  this place except that you get the freedom to sit on the park’s “katte” while you relish snacks. So like any other day when the challenges of staring the computer outgrows, TC boy and myself “sink”. We headed to  this place to grab a bite of “bun nippat masala” and some “Masala Coke”. I think these two items are hot on his list and everyone’s as well. We did see a lot of orders for this.All this for a pretty resonable price. The bun nippat masala is 15 INR and masala coke is 16 INR. Give this place a look when you are in a mood to devour some some chat-phat desi snack. And i must confess, when it comes to munchies like – chakli, kodbele, nippat , ground nut , hesara bele nothing beats the chetties.

Welcome to the Arena, where high-ranking warriors are transformed into spineless mush. Abandoning every ounce of common sense and any trace of doubt, you lunge onto a stage of harrowing landscapes and veiled abysses. Your new environment rejects you with lava pits and atmospheric hazards as legions of foes surround you, testing the gut reaction that brought you here in the first place. Your new mantra: Fight or be finished.

Fits right for a project team that in pressure for delivering on time. We already had a tough time line and were working weekends to meet them. But what the heck, a tired mind needs some kind of energy. And QUAKE 3 was the adrenalin we found. It all started as a wild idea on a group chat,  Aswe were talking someone just downloaded the quake 3 demo version and shared it to others. Some one else was swift to set up the server and before we realized we were spawning like crazy. So much so, that we even forgot we were in office. It needed a PM to bring us back to our seats...

Tough letting it go... i am sure this is just the beginning :-)

My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels.
She asked, ‘What’s on TV?’
I said, ‘Dust.’

And then the fight started…… :-)

It’s Friday and it was time for us to discover new eating places. Some one from my team suggested that we try paratha plaza in Sanjaynagar. Off, we dashed to this place. Since this is a road side – fast food style place, you will not get any parking if you come in car. You will have to look into the gulli’s to park your car. As usual in Bangalore, there is absolutely no problem parking bikes.

You will have to help yourself to a comfortable place on the foot path by pulling in the chair. The owner has put up couple of his pics standing next to Gautam Gambhir. In this age of digital photography, i doubt if that’s real. Anyways, the point is he makes good parathas and that’s all that matters. Most of the items on his menu are either named after hit movies or have a .com attached to it.

While you are there you can try – Bunty aur Babli( that’s my fav pick), gobhi.com, paneer pepper etc. And yes, if you want curd to eat along with your paratha, you will have to shell out extra money for a bowl of curd. Unfortunately they don’t serve you achar.They also have lassi, samosas, kachori & yummy gulab jamoons.

So all in all, if you like to devour authentic punjabi paratha head there.

See, this is where your whole theory falls apart. When a bird flies, it does not know it is flying( i.e doing the impossible). When we try to fly, we DO realize its is possible , & thus we fail.

It’s not hard to understand! If we could suppress what we know, we might stand a chance. This obviously has many applications in our lives. Give it some thought!!

A good quite place to enjoy the taste of Malnad. This afternoon, along with my family and one of our family friends we headed to Suggi’s. Suggi is on the main road connecting Basaveshwaranagar and Shankarmutt. It’s next to Panacea hospital. My first impression of the hotel from outside was it could be expensive. The waterfall added cost to it. But the bad thing was that there was no parking space. Only 2 cars were parked and yet the parking was full. I had to look for an alternative place to park my car. Meanwhile my family had made themselves comfortable in the hotel. Ambience wise it’s not so good, but they have tried thier best to make it look good. The bearers were in the traditional coastal area dress. It was a pleasant surprise when i looked at the menu card. They had some real good varieties of Veg and Non Veg food and all of them were priced well. The best part was the ragi malt kind of a thing that was a part of one of the Thali’s. Niyanthri relished it . So it looks like a good place if i need to take Niyanthri out for lunch :-) The food tasted good and i could slowly see that the restaurant was getting crowded. After lunch when we walked out we noticed that there were quite a few ppl waiting for their turn. So all in all ,a good decent place to be , if you are in a mood to taste Malnad style food.

The other day, we were @ our Adda and and were talking about this guy who broke into a lion's den at the zoo and got mauled .People were talking about how there should have been better defenses put up to prevent people getting into the cage. We overheard a guy suggesting setting up some kind of deterrent for example, putting some sort of fierce animal in the cage, which would attack anybody who climbed in :-) DUDE, the lion’s in there for that ;-) Sometimes ppl just talk without even understanding what has been told.

RCB has done it again. They have sunk to their favorite position – second from last. Now to make into the top 4 for the semi finals, they have to sweat it out…No only will they have to win matches from here but also have a close eye on other teams winning and losing. The points and the run rate would very well decide the entry point into the Semi’s. Come on guys you are capable of much more. The old horses need to fire and fire consistently( Rahul, Kallis & Kumble). Remember Bangalore boys.. you have the takath and at one time there were 8 from Karnataka in the national team. Can’t you guys do this much for your fans :-)

PS: I have given up hope on this team ( at least for this season) , but i am still interested in the RCB tee shirts :-)

My BIL finally found his match in Puttaparthi. Puttaparthi is a small town situated in Andhra Pradesh which is around 156 kms from bangalore and should typically take you 3hrs to reach the place by road. Puttaparthi is also the residence of the notable religious leader – Sathya Sai Baba.

The plan was to leave Bangalore on Saturday afternoon , just after lunch and reach Puttaparthi by evening. This would also give us time to visit some places in Puttaparthi. BIL had booked a 14 seater Tempo-Traveller. I knew the very instant, it would be tough journey with lil Niyanthri. And as usual, wifey forgot to pick up Niyanthri’s cushion pillow and so it was more tough for us to handle the lil one. The route to Puttaparthi was a pretty straight forward one with some road works in between. BIL wanted to avoid the tax that anyone should pay at the border while entering other states. So he did his home work and came out with a route plan which apparently did not have any checkpost and this involved passing through villages and kucha roads. Man the travel was getting longer and Niyanthri was getting irritable. Poor thing had to be content on either wifey’s or my lap as all others looked strangers to her. Finally we made it to Puttaparthi and my initial comment was – another half hour drive we would have been to Hyderabad :-) All the guys in the van, stared at me and the looks were enough for me to stay silent for the entire trip.

The engagement ceremony went well, except for the food. Everyone found it difficult to digest, thanks to Andhra’s summer.  Niyanthri looked her best with her traditional indian dress. Most of the time some one or the other would take her away and return her back coz she would break down crying among new faces. Midst of all these , we did not get any time for shopping or looking at places. Fortunately the place we stayed – APSRTC tourism hotel had Lepakshi in their campus. We wanted to check out some famous Kondapalli toys for Niyanthri. But there was nothing that caught our attention, except a bag which wifey liked and bought.

Finally there needs to be special mention of the driver who took us, without whom there would be no blog at all. He was a maniac who got us killed nearly 3 times. Would not accept orders nor would slow down during bad roads and road humps. Hat’s off to such guys!!! You really make us think life beyond driving ;-)

After a good release, what’s the best place to chill? Well we hit upon this idea to spend the night at Nandi Hills. For some reason or other many people wanted to get back the same night. Also it was Muru’s last day @ work. So we wanted to go somewhere, but not far. In a flash Green park crossed our minds. Well to be honest we wanted a dhabba to chill and re-live Muru’s memoirs , so a dhaba was just what we needed. But unfortunately with BLR growing in all directions its hard to get a full fledged dhabba. But something was better than nothing. So we heeded straight to the dhaba, after Sumanth’s last check in.

It started raining while we made our way. We though these premature shower would end soon, but alas the rain came on for a long time and dampened our other wise up beat mood. But we still continued. Green park is near jakkur and when we reached there it was still raining, but somehow we got in there without being too wet. The sessions started and the drink’s was on Muru. Green park had some good food, but some of them very salty. I think we would need to tell them upfront to add less salt in the dishes. Apart from that, the cost is reasonable. It cost us 1.5K for 11 of us ( excluding the drinks) and would have been much lesser, if Sumanth had not tried to act smart ;-)

The only thing that you have to bear here is the time they take to serve. Don;t go in there if you are looking for a quick exit. Green park is a place to sit , relax and eat ;-)

This place rocks. I have now been to this place at least half a dozen times and still head over heels when i plan to visit it. The lunch menu is simply great, not disregarding the ambience. So this time when one of our colleague was moving on, we decided to visit this place.

Cafe masala is located in Eva Mall( 5th floor) and is a BJN group product. So it just can’t get better. The lunch comprises of starters – soups,crackers, croissants, cheese balls.  You can also try the salads, pastas and spaghettis. The grilled fish, chicken hariyali kabab and chicken lollipop is always worth a try. And offcourse for the main course you have couple of vegeterian and NV curries to try out with the roti’s. You have some biriyani’s and rice to help yourself with.

There is also a DIY section for the chaat lovers. And finally the plethora of items in Dessert sections – truffles, cheese cakes, puddings, ice cream, kulfi’s and fruits

All in all a good place to treat your gastronomical senses ;-) for 249 INR + tax.

The marriage season has started with a bang. For the first time so many of my friends and relatives are either getting married or having house warming ceremonies in a rush. My major part of my life has been either in office during the day and spending the other time at function halls. I am not sick of eating out. The heat mixed with oily preparation is giving me away. I am starting to dislike all my once loved sweets and dishes because of the frequency in which they are getting repeated. I know i just have to be a little careful esp when i learnt that one of my colleague is down with Typhoid after attending a series of weddings. And there are a few more  coming up which involves travelling to different places. Heck, let me look at the bright side of things – these are after all their D-Day’s and they expect me to thrilled with that. I am thrilled guys… err.. I have learnt new techniques to keep Niyanthri occupied during such functions and put her to sleep. Kudos to myself !!!!