Chicken curry for one soul

It’s payback time! Out of the seven times I have cooked a subji , I have referred the internet five times. (when I say subji I’m not including the egg bhurjees and omelets and all those simple bachelors’ works of art)

And most often than not I’ve found what I needed. Today, when I planned to cook chicken curry (after having gobbled down almost four truck loads of them in my life) I called up my mother for help. A five minute call and an hour later, I tasted the best chicken curry I have had in Bangalore. I hope you can feel the same after you try this simple recipe (atleast if you stay in Bangalore).

Step 1: Get excited ! You’re going to cook chiken curry !

Step 2: Get stuff

250 gm Chicken (ask the seller to cut small pieces)

1 Garlic bulb/ Garlic paste

2 Tomatoes

2 Onions (medium sized)

Curd (need 1/2 cup)

Chicken Masala Powder (any company’s would do I guess, I had MDH) (2-3 tspoons)

Ghee/Salt/Red Chili powder (If you’re cooking for the first time in your kitchen)

Step 3: Wash the chicken thoroughly

Step 4: Marinate the chicken

Add salt (2 tspoons) , red chili powder (1 tspoon), and 2 cloves of grinded (in a mixer or otherwise) garlic / ½ tspoon of garlic paste (I used the grinded one here) to half cup of curd to make the paste. Mix the washed chicken well in the paste. [this has to be kept like this for next 30 minutes]

Marinated Chicken

Step 5: Prepare the masala

Grind the tomatoes, onions and garlic (4-5 cloves) in the mixer.

Put 2 spoons ghee in a cooker and heat it.

Drop in the paste, salt (11/2 tspoons) chili powder (1 tspoon) and the chicken masala (2 tspoons) and heat it for 5 minutes.

The masala

Step 6: Mix chicken and masala

By this time, the 30 minutes of marinating should be over. Add the chicken to the masala being heated. Heat the complete stuff (keep stirring whenever you remember) till you see the ghee separating from the rest of the masala and the masala sticking on the chicken (This would take around 10-15 minutes)

Chicken mixed with masala

Step 7: Hear the Whistle

Add in water just to cover the chicken and a little more and close the cooker, to wait for the whistle. (This will take again around 10 minutes)

Step 7: Final touches

After the whistle let the cooker be by itself (turn off the flame) for sometime, till the pressure is released. Open the lid, taste your creation, check if you need to add salt (I needed to) and….

Final look and feel (don't worry there will be two bowls full)

that’s it !

When Dilbert called Suppandi

(An Ode to Late Ram Waeerkar and Scott Adams)

No burps, only farts - I

This post is out of absolute sentiment of ‘giving it back’.
They email, hand pamphlets, call on phone, SMS and whatever possibly they can; enticing and luring first time customers, to deliver just the opposite of what they promise.
I blog (sometimes).

I’ve been in South Bangalore for around seven months and eaten out like a hungry Mangolian (used Mongolian as it sounds appropriate) at more than twenty restaurants/bars/fast food joints here. Any person from the same area would find it difficult to believe and consider me a person with lesser refined tastes. I don’t completely deny that, though it’s more to save myself from the excruciating agony of getting stuck in ring/hosur/bannerghatta road traffic with an empty stomach. The search for a good eating joint in south Bangalore has been almost futile with an exception of a couple of places. I’ll take up three restaurants for this post.


Gud Dhani - BTM Layout http://gud-dhani.blogspot.com/



Their blog says “We, at Gud Dhani believe...Restaurant...is not a place one should go on Saturday/Sundays”. I would advice that one should not go there on any day.The first thing
which really puts you off is the space or the lack of it. The feeling is that of being clamped for room, with strange little bamboo doors separating sections.

The walls are done up with a lot of mindless cave art (the crudeness of which I find repulsive. Either keep it authentic or else modernize it, why destroy the essence?] and if that is not enough to kill your lust for food.. the menu is categorized by stupid mix of strange titles, with no theme what so ever.

We ordered kadi pakoda, dakre wali kadi, paranthas and baingan bharva trying to favor a more Rajasthani cuisine, with images of the camel from the adverts, still fresh in our minds. And then was the real dampener “with this the USP stand like a beacon, that is the Food. Cuisines here is made by finest chef from northern India Gives a finger licking taste which linger really long.” ..yes agreed ! the taste lasts as long as you go home and use your own soap (yes, no soap there) to wash your hands off the oil. The paranthas had enough oil to fry samosas for an entire fifth standard and were mediocre in taste. The baingan did not have enough masala to drive me into taking a second helping. The Kadi was edible but ‘just’.

Alas, even devil has a smart looking tail. I liked the fact that the waiters were polite and inconspicuous, the way I prefer. The meal for two cost us around 200 Rs. which would have been decent if the management would have put more effort in finding the USP backing chef and an interior designer rather than spending time in mindless campaigning. If I were Nikhat Kazmi and this was a movie I would have given it 1 star. Go there only if all other places where you can utlize your sodexho coupons are shut down for ever. It’s a confused place with tasteless food.


Tasty Bites (No, Tasty is not a dog) , Jayanagar

I missed it the first time I went looking for it. It’s really tiny and besides a bar (the distinctive Bangalore bar, with a standing counter and mucky seating area, with chicken bones on the floor) and a bakery, and camouflaged sometimes between these. But this only till a point that you eat here once. After that, you are surely going to remember the place.
Lot has been said about it on mouthshut, burp and so on, so will not rant the cheap/north Indian/ homely food story. What I like about this place is the speed, quality, the swarm of lady chefs and Uncle, The Efficient – IV – The Man with the Cap.
He takes orders with accuracy and courtesy (standard welcome note “Haan beta bolo”) in Hindi (also in Kannada/English when required) and then shouts out loud the same to the ladies, who like well-organized ants quickly get on to the task. Though mostly the sabji is precooked, rotis are freshly delivered to your plate.

My favorites here have been kadi pakoda, bhindi dry, baingan bharta, kale chane and palak paneer, though the rice kheer is the real winner. The thick sweet dish tastes of Horlicks a little and should be surely tried.

Since not many seats are available, it is suggested to either be early (before 8:30 for dinner, I haven’t had lunch there) or else get the food packed. A sumptuous meal will cost you around 70 Rs.(including the Kheer which is 25 Rs.) NK Rating : 4 Stars (I thought of giving 3 and ½ but then realized the stupidity of the concept)


Inchara, JP nagar

What caught my attention first was the mystery surrounding the location of the restaurant. You suddenly ‘identify’ it. It is strangely advertised (there is signage all around JP nagar advertising the name, though not pointing in any direction) and oddly located (edge of the residential area).
So when I finally did identify it, it was not without much fanfare. It seemed like a wedding of a former Prime Minister’s daughter was being held there. There was a flood of cars and I parked well 500 mts away from the gate, on the roadside.

It was a ‘mela’ inside too, waiters running around, sounds of bottles, laughter, loud, out of place and sick 90’s Bollywood music (before Rehman came and saved an entire generation). After watching this commotion, the only reason why we still ventured inside was exactly the same commotion, or rather to seek an answer to it.

There was a couples section and thinking of all those times when I would’ve smirked and made fun of such kitsch arrangements, (why did they ever make the word hypocrisy ? Bloody hypocrites!), I found a table there for me and my wife. It had to be a chosen table, for I’ve never had so many mosquitoes feasting on me in such little time. It was only after a bottle of strong beer, four reminders and a snarl that the waiter finally lit a ‘kachua chaap’ near the table. By then, I’m sure all the WBC’s in my body were fighting with the viruses the little monsters would have left in my blood.

The waiter was only keen on dropping beer. Rest of the items had to wait for what seems like a week in an airplane, where it has been announced that it would be landing shortly.

Finally, when it did arrive, the food was pretty ordinary. There is very little that can go wrong in a tandoori chicken but these guys still managed to serve bad tandoori chicken ( the chicken was not as healthy as the mosquitoes they look after). Even White Horse (more on this JP Nagar restaurant later) serves more and better in less money. Among the other ordered items we couldn’y really figure out which was what, so difficult to comment on.

Ordinary food, odd ambience, sorry music and horrendous service. NK rating: 1 star

Bee Attack

It was a usual night, exhausted after a day of work, driving, food and a movie we (me and my wife) were planning to sleep. Ritualistically, I moved to the living room to switch off the tubelight.

With eyes half closed and fifteen more steps to reach close to the switch, the buzz I heard seemed to be a signal of an ageing tubelight and I mentally put a bullet point in the never ending list of – things to get repaired/changed/buy.

A sudden increase in intensity of the buzz and a feeling of intrusion in my personal space made me open my eyes to a scene which I shall never forget in this and the next couple of lives.

More than sixty irritated and lethal honeybees were trying to burst into the tube. These were hitting their heads wildly in panic against the glass failing to get inside, then circling around in mad angles to hit upon something else to release their disillusionment and not finding anything, returning back with even more fury to the tube. [This was fury in recursion]

I ran back to bedroom to switch off the light so that they don’t come inside. I shouted in muted voice (was not sure if the bees could listen) to my wife about the one way violence. As though prepared for the unexpected (living with me helps), she wrapped herself with a shawl and in a flash stood right next to me. The feeling of panic was changing into that of adventure.

There was a bigger crisis for two reasons; One - the bees were increasing by the second. The open window in the kitchen was the pathway through which bees were in groups of four and five were sliding in. Two - The switch of the tube was near to it and more so, switching it off would mean that we would loose a space where the enemy was holed in/out.

Out of the windows we could see no lights, the whole apartment was blacked out, was this was a conspiracy or is it really that late at night ? There was no time to contemplate.. we needed to act. My wife came up with a solution (the only one we realized we had, we could not run out of the house as we would have to go through the bees again and also were not sure of the unexplored space outside). It was to take out the Hit spray (used as a cockroach killer) from the kitchen.

After a quick acceptance of mutual bravado (I’ll go in, No I’ll..) I sprinted to the kitchen and grabbed the Hit bottle kept thankfully at an easily accessible position (for obvious reasons) and ran back to a location from where I realized in the next ten minutes, that my basic instincts to kill a fellow specie were more than intact. I kept on spraying till all of them dropped down, till the walls were wet, till my fingers got tired, till my wife reminded me to close the kitchen window.
I didn’t feel like Ashoka after the Kalinga war, I felt good and slept well with the Hit spray lying close to the bed.


Relativity is the mother of dilemma. In trying to negate the exaggeration one could underestimate the reality.

Shimmering tiny waves

On a bright Sunday morning as the shimmering tiny waves cast light shadows on the floor of the clean pool, a man sitting on a white plastic chair pretends to read the Da Vinci Code. There are two permanent wooden benches, but on Sundays there are lots of plastic chairs and tables around the pool, left over from Saturday night’s party. The man cannot read the words as his view of the text is blurred, his eye lenses focusing on two kids playing on the grass between him and the pool.

Though, playing as it may seem at first, the kids (big brother and sister) are trying to accomplish a complicated task. They are trying to take water out of their little football which had earlier fallen in the pool. They press it, jump on it and throw it, each action accompanied with giggles from the little girl and glances and occasional shouts from the man, commanding the elder brother to make sure his sister doesn’t jump in water. One might mistake him to be their father, but the look of duty on his face, more than tenderness, confuses. The little girl helps in clearing the doubt, frantically shouts “daddiiee daddiiee” each word in absolute harmony with a jump, as a large hairy man emerges from the changing room. He smiles, kisses his daughter on her nose and dives into the water leaving her frantic with excitement.

The brother watches the scene with the usual disillusioned ‘and they said sisters bring happiness and good luck to the family’ – look. He wonders if his sister would now be interested in the ball and decides to sit on the ball and starts wondering the use of the dirty puddle just near the pool. Claps are added to the shouting, as the father’s smiling face appears and disappears into the water.

The pandemonium helps the novel man in justifying to himself that its time to finally close the book (without putting a bookmark) and get into some action. He points towards the girl who is now quite near to the pool and shouts out loud, “Trisha, get back, you will fall down.. TRISHAA!, Sonu, drag Trisha back beta”. Sonu, stares in Trisha’s direction and while he starts contemplating, the novel man picks up Trisha, who not accustomed to such awkward way of being lifted, screams wildly.

Sound travels strangely inside water, adding bass most times, or slowing the speed of the waves, maybe the way one hears in dreams, you don’t see lips moving but you know who’s talking. Trisha’s father, who is swimming almost on the pool floor, troubled by these unpleasant screams heads up for the closest point of extreme brightness. “What happened Mishra? Let the kid enjoy yaaar” he says to his friend who looks like that old college friend who never married. The one who has dropped in to stay with your family while on a visit to your city for official work.


I smile and imagine the next scene, a glance at the clock makes me realize that I have been watching them for too long, time for another lap, I stand up, hold my breath and jump in to the shimmering tiny waves.

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Prologue :
The concept of exercise has usually failed to appeal to my hedonistic senses. Running on the treadmill without actually moving forward in space , jogging on road in Ejipura with the constant fear of being run over by some 3/4 wheeler (after 5 am) or being chased by the naughty canines (before 5 am), are not smart options. But since one has to choose between two options - beer + exercise or beer + fat… I chose the former after an year of believing that there was a third option – ‘beer’.
Badminton was the first tryst with the exercise saga which didn’t last long. According to my hypothetical survey, 67% of Bangloreans staying near Ejipura want to play badmintom at the exact place as I wanted. Sadly, the space is fit for 0.3% of us. This results in fierce competition (not in the game, but to get onto the courts). So, even after paying and waiting in queue to get onto the courts (people from my city would never believe this), if one is not playing like Padukone (not Deepika…yeah.. she’s so beautiful) from game one, the people around communicate in most simple ways that you are not wanted. If you are a guy who is paired with another guy in a mixed doubles game, please get the message.

The respite came in the form of a swimming pool. Though, to find it devoid of the dense throng of Bangloreans, made me suspicious about the content of the pool. A week of spying and trying later, when nothing seemed muddled, I fell for it, and have been with it since then, experiencing life in and around the pool.
Here was one such experience.

Moore montage

No, I am not a die hard Micheal Moore fan, he might or might not be twisting information (“We learn that Michael Moore is still using editing tricks, time compression and juxtaposition to create the emotional reactions that he wants you to have”, "...The biggest anti-Michael Moore website on the internet..." - Michael Moore, moorewatch.com) to drive home his point, but what I do appreciate is that the point he is trying to make, is generally sensible and its OK to use such a technique to provoke the sedentary humans of our age. This also makes me wonder if this technique (of twisting and tweaking and spiced up provocative FACTS) has always been used…the “montage”, adding two scenes/things together to get a fresh thing, could this be extended to the way we talk, trying to convince, the leaders (political and otherwise) the managers (forever) the experienced the news channels..media hmm ? so is montage an integral part of our lives..? and are we oblivious to it/ excuse it and finally on much provocation be moved by it? ..how much is enough? Or correct? Yeah..subjective (I love the word)

..oh yes, but SICKO drives the point home..

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In di another galaxy

Ana ka kin: Oye, is Moore’s montage relevant to us?

Oye:

.. according to the director of a Mission Hospital in Bangalore “Health insurance in India at serious cross roads, either the patients or the insurance companies need to mature real soon”.

The insurance model followed in India (no surprises! - The last time I was surprised was when we won the T20 world cup) is the same as that followed in the US. So, my friend (only friends read my blog) to feel the heat, first watch SICKO and then get admitted in a hospital to try out your TPA (third party associates) and your Insurance policies, or if you are the s/w developer waiting for a sense of purpose in life or someone similar, read up your policy papers carefully.

To kill more time:

http://slate.com/id/2102723/
http://www.moorewatch.com/