Hali Mane

The restaurant called ‘Hali Mane’ in Malleswaram turned out to be a real treat to the senses (especially taste and smell)…The name literally translates to village house and you would expect it to serve authentic Karnataka cuisine…besides which you can find the usual North Indian dishes like paratha-kurma and naan/roti/kulcha with butter paneer masala on the menu…
I wanted to taste something different so I tried akki roti that’s roti made out of rice flour and ragi roti made of ragi flour…these are served with 2 types of chutney…they tasted really good…
They also serve ragi balls with I think sambar...not sure…its supposed to be really healthy but as with most people, I decide if a dish is palatable or not by the looks of it rather than its nutritive factor…so eating that was totally out of the question :P…
The second time round (this place is totally worth the second visit) we had meals it’s a mixture of North and South Indian dishes… I liked the way the meal was served…they give each person a bottle of mineral water and serve each dish separately rather than pile everything on the plate all at once …also you can order the separate meal for kids which serve smaller portions ...you are served a tambulam (that’s nothing but paan), banana and ice cream to round of the meal…on the whole it was satisfactory but I was not very impressed by the side dishes served with the naan…the subzi’s could have tasted better…
I feel they can completely do away with the North Indian section of the menu and come up with more dishes that can be billed under the category of ‘authentic’ Kannada food…but I can sympathize with most restaurateurs who open restaurant for the masses and are in the constant fear of going under if their hotel does not have the multi cuisine tag attached to them… But Hali Mane seems to be doing pretty well for itself judging by the never-ending crowd outside probably because it’s able to provide quality food at inexpensive rates…but to tell you the truth the major USP for me was the cleanliness aspect…

Kafka on the Shore

My latest read is a book called "Kafka on the Shore" by a Japanese author who calls himself Haruki Murakami...
My brother apparently picked it up from the 'classics' section of a leading book store...can I sue the book store?
Wasting perfectly good money... I agree both my brother and I make good money as software engineers... but why waste our hard earned cash on such an irrelevant book...or is it my problem that I am too close minded and hence couldn’t capture the "deeper meaning" such books often imply?????
Or is it like most modern arts which only TRUE ART ENTHUSIASTS seem to (or shall I put it as claim to) decipher...no!! it cannot be that...I am a self confessed book enthusiast :)...
Ok!! Getting back to the book...it is described as an international bestseller...are all bookstores in the world stocking the book in the 'classics' section?
It deals with two main characters-
A teenager who calls himself Kafka... he runs away from home…and finds a library...he sleeps with the head librarian (a 50 yr old woman) who might be his mother...and he works as an assistant to the other librarian who is actually a woman who considers herself trapped in a woman's body...
And an old man called Nakata...this guy is illiterate and has been living in seclusion from his family...he can talk to cats and stones and goes around making fishes and leeches rain from the sky and searches for an entrance stone (don’t look at me…I have no clue as to what the author was trying to pull here)...
I seriously don’t know how I finished the book...but by the end of it I wanted to shoot myself or much better... shoot the author: P
Oh! By the way did I mention it was in the "CLASSICS SECTION" in the bookstore???

Here's some readers' takes on the new movie Sawaariya :)... these are not my reviews, I haven't even seen the movie...I just received them over mail... and frankly I don't think I will see the movie in future as well

"Sawaariya is one long song with some breaks for dialog. And by dialog I mean girly giggling by the chic and some punch-me-in-the-face ex-pressions accompanied by pig-like grunting by the hero. One wonders if all the actors are the props and the set is the real star in this movie. I came really close to concluding that the bridge-over-the-fake-river is the central star of the movie, because everyone of the other actors looks like they were made of rock. And the rocks had moss growing over them. And the rocks were painted blue."

"To say Saawariya is a crappy movie would not be correct. Horrendously Ridiculous comes close, but it doesn't really capture the essence of the absurdity that this movie is. After watching this movie I felt like tying up Sanjay Leela Bansali alone in a room, forcing him to watch a cockroach chase a spider round-and-round a water fountain for 3 hours. That too in blue light. Because seriously, that's what this entire movie is. It's two grossly untalented kids, who probably got kicked out of college for lack of attendance and ended up on this set to spend the rest of the day. And for the love of God, I can't figure out why the whole movie is in blue! Maybe the director was trying to get every frame half-black half-blue so that the WinZip compression would work better to save some electrons, what with all the global warming and all. That's the best explanation I could come up with, because nothing else can explain the lack of daylight (or plain light, for that matter) in this movie."

Wishing all the readers of this space a very happy Diwali :)

Infinitea

I Visited this restaurant (or shall I term it as a bistro??) called “Infinitea” on Saturday…Its located dead opposite Sigma Mall on Cunningham Road…A real neat place to hang out with friends and family…The atmosphere was really chic and was unusually buzzing with an assorted crowd of youngish and middle aged people…The food was good and the smell would have been appetizing if not for a bunch of twenty something’s chain smoking at the next table…Its basically a tea bar with a small menu which is mix of continental and oriental food…I guess the tea would be their strong point but it was lunch time and the portions were big enough and left no space for tea after the meal…Good food though :)...They could use a change of scene where music is concerned…Some redundant music track from Titanic was being played the day I visited the restaurant…But nonetheless a great place and is absolutely worth a second visit…

Harry Potter, Runaway Jury, To kill a Mockingbird

To begin with I have read just three books in the past two months and that seems kind of distressing for an avid book reader like me…But I guess commitments on both the professional and the personal front seem to have pushed "hobbies" to the back seat... writing blogs being the other...


The latest and the last narrative from the Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows) was personally a big let down...I was not really impressed by the ending…And the story seemed to drag in some places...The end of the previous book promised a brilliant and dramatic ending to the series...To sum it up in few words "JKR fails to deliver"...I was very disappointed by Snape's story as well :(..

The second book was relatively alright…This one being "the Runaway Jury" by
John Grisham... I have watched this movie earlier and liked it so, decided to
take up the book...It’s the usual Grisham tale about lawyers, juries and trials...This one being about tobacco litigations and fixing of juries by the tobacco companies…And the strangely behaving jury that protests at every chance it gets, etc...Probably since I have watched the movie the ending sort of lost its surprise element…

And finally a book that seems to have held my interest for more than a day :)...This one being the all time classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee…I have heard a lot of positive reviews about this book and I must tell you that its well worth all the time you would spend reading it... This book told from the point of view of a small girl called Jean Louise Finch (better known as Scout) deals with racial prejudice in the American south and the impact that racial hatred can create in the simple and playful lives of two kids when their father is assigned the case of a black man raping a white woman…But what really stands out in this book is the brilliant characterization…

Harry Potter

• The Harry Potter season is here again with all its hype and hoopla....
  HARRY POTTER seems to be the topic of most conversations...kids to adults; everyone's jumping in the bandwagon...
  Be it television, radio or the newsprint everyone wants a piece of the action...bookstores are making a bumper, what with the books selling like hot cakes (with or without the discounts)...

Suddenly all everyone's talking about is either the Harry Potter movie being released or the latest Harry Potter book being unveiled...
People speculating as to how the series is going to end...

• Is Harry going to survive the ordeal of meeting Voldemort once again?
  
• Will Voldemort die? (Good always triumphs, doesn’t it?)
  
• Is Snape the good guy or the bad guy and why did Dumbledore trust him so much?
  
• Will Dumbledore come back from the dead to help Harry?
  
• Will Ron and Hermione get together? What about Harry and Ginny?
  

Have you observed how conventional this marketing strategy is?
First rumors about the contents of the latest book... then the statements made by the author as to how dear the characters have become and how deeply saddened she is, by the step she has to take and finish off the main characters since the script demands it...
Then the speculations...and for months together unto the date of the release the rumours spread until it becomes a frenzy...rumors about the leaking of the book's contents…the heightened security around the books...and the number of copies being booked in advance (setting record of sorts)...
But this form of marketing actually works like a charm since, who wouldn’t want to buy the book with such hype being created?

I agree the Harry potter series as such is really well written and makes for a very interesting read…
I would also like to say that to me, Tolkien is still the master, where the fantasy genre is concerned and Ms.Rowling has borrowed heavily from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy...
But all said and done I am still a big Potter fan and I can’t wait to read the last book to see how Ms Rowling is planning to conclude this spectacular series…