Secret City
Autorickshaw Artists – In one of Shivajinagar’s maze-like streets - known to Bangaloreans as that part of town you go to for cheap meat, exotic pets, Suleimani chai, or your stolen car – works Afsar Pasha. Though there are at least a dozen practitioners of Pasha’s art in Shivajinagar, the man in question is to autorickshaw drivers in Bangalore what Rembrandt was to portraiture in 17th Century Holland. For about Rs 800, Pasha (or if you’re willing to arrive at a compromise, one of his lesser contemporaries) will paint the likeness of the latest Khan or a particularly flattering profile view of Rajkumar on the back of an autorickshaw. In the hierarchy of autorickshaw art, Pasha says Rajkumar ranks as the most popular, followed by Shankar Nag, Sanjay Dutt, Shah Rukh Khan and what he calls Shore-Temple-Sunset. He says he decided to follow his father, Anwar’s example and picked up a paint brush 35 years ago, when he’d just completed his schooling. He says his muse, and the in-demand star when he began as an autorickshaw artist, was ‘Rambo.’ “I charge Rs 400 for only face, Rs 850 – 1000 for full pose and Rs 100 – 150 for scenery,” he says. And as is the case with these things, Mayur Polepalli, a Bangalorean in Taipei maintains a blog, arart.blogspot.com that documents autorickshaw art. “What’s on the autorickshaw is what’s on the driver’s mind. I was fascinated with the thought and when that turned to obsession, I figured I had to document it,” Polepalli said, by email. AS Arts Planet, 1, C Street, SH Road, Shivajinagar. 93434-91919. Butterfly Park – Two years ago, the country’s first butterfly park opened at the Bannerghatta Biological Park, with little frippery. Which is a pity, because this well kept secret needs to be told, and the park needs a constant flow of visitors. The Park is an hour’s drive from Bangalore and the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation runs four luxury buses to the park everyday (route 365 from Majestic at Rs 25 a ride). Tickets cost Rs 20 for adults and Rs 10 for children (under 10) and once you’ve paid up, you enter a large, transparent dome that houses an entire eco-system. During season (June to November), 20 species of butterflies make this dome their home. The day we went, guided by the little plaques that dot the park, we spotted the Common Mormon, the Great Indian Crow, the Flying tiger, the Blue Tiger, the Striped Tiger, the Crimson Rose, the Common Castor, the Lion Butterfly and the Common Leopard: the last, a tawny specimen with little black spots settling on various patches of sunlight, as though to be examined. We were advised to wear brightly coloured clothes to attract the butterflies and to not touch them because the oils on our fingers could destroy the scales on the wings. There is entertainment for the kids as well; touch-screens allow them to re-arrange jigsaw pieces into a butterfly and others that allow you to learn the workings of a butterfly, magnifying their various parts. There is also an exhibition that allows you to see plants that are butterflies/pupae/caterpillar-friendly. We were also told it wouldn’t be too much of a problem if we shouted our disapproval of a particularly ugly species. Butterflies don’t have ears. Bannerghatta Biological Park, Bannerghatta Road. 2782-8540. Open on all days except Tuesdays 9.30am – 4.30pm. www.bannerghattabiopark.org. Chinese noodle factory - Or Leong's Food Products, occupying a fairly small space in a noodle thin lane in KG Halli, is where your egg noodle and crispy wonton lunch was born. Unlike Willy Wonka's glitzy establishment, this place doesn’t have tomes dedicated to its history, nor is it on any culinary map. It is nearly impossible to find even if you have a city map with you and clear directions. You either know Leong's or you don't; besides factory visits are frowned upon. Far from the ritzy interiors of your favourite Thai, Chinese, Japanese restaurant, workers from Bihar dump a tonne of flour into the automatic kneader, break in 2000 eggs, add water and hit the go button. All this before dawn breaks, the mountain of dough then gets into the press and miles of noodles and sheets of wonton skins area ready for the steamer. A quick steam later they are weighed, packed and driven off to the 400 Oriental cuisine restaurants in the city. By noon, everyone at the factory heads home. Started in 1980 by Liang Chingta, Leong's is the only supplier of fresh noodles in the city. Everyday, the 400 ‘Oriental’ establishments in the city pick up 1.5 tonnes of fresh noodles and 200 kilos of wonton wrappers that this factory makes. Leong's is the sole distributor for Ajinomoto from Japan and tomato paste from China; their shelves also hold barilla pasta and olive oil from Italy. But as Chingta’s brother Peter says, "This is the jam; it is noodles which are my bread and butter. No chef in is right mind will use instant noodles". He sells the noodles at Rs 34 per kilo. This is the price for the restaurants; the finished dish will cost you ten times that. The wonton wrappers sell at Rs 70 per kilo (there are 120 wrappers per kilo). 27/28, Mt Land, KG Halli, Venkatapuram Post Main Road. 2548-0156 Donne Biryani at Shivaji – Waiting to be served at this smoky, dingy two-room restaurant (we use the term in its loosest sense) is as much a pleasure as it is a penance. The biryani is cooked on coals, so if, on the day you are there, the coals don’t light up, you’ll either have to go elsewhere to eat or wait. And the wait could take more than two hours, as we found out one recent Saturday. Even when all is normal, the atmosphere is hardly one you’d expect at a place where food is worshipped: patrons frequently curse the cook in a Babel of expletives. And the cook curses right back. You have to jostle for space and if it’s a Sunday, wiggle through people to get your biryani in a donne (a bowl made of dried banana fibre). When you do get that donne, and a relatively quiet place to eat, the pleasure begins. Because Shivaji believes in slow-cooked food, every morsel of rice retains the flavour of mutton. The meat itself is divine, marinated and cooked so that it crumbles off the bone. There are usually only three items on the menu at Shivaji: fried mutton, fried chicken and the mutton biryani. There is also the chicken biryani, but if you’re willing to go through all that trouble to eat chicken, you should just Google ‘KFC Bangalore.’ 672, 45th Cross, Jayanagar 8th Block 98451-49217. 12.30 – 3pm. Monday holiday. Elgin Talkies – With the Shivajinagar Bus Station to your left, walk a few hundred feet past a lassi bar, a couple of bakeries, yawning men hawking cane chairs, and take a right into the narrow, winding street bearing the name Shivaji Street. Next to a barber’s shop on your left, you’ll find the 112-year-old Elgin Talkies, Bangalore’s oldest and still-functional theatre. The cinema hall was opened by Veerabhadra Mudaliar in 1896 and was named after the then Viceroy of India Lord Elgin. It began as a playhouse that staged musicals and ballroom dancing - it was a place you brought your black tie, tuxedo tails and ballroom gowns to - but after the Lumiere Brothers’ premiere in the Watson Hotel, Bombay, it began showing silent movies in 1907 (India’s first silent movie Raja Harishchandra being one) and in 1931 began screening the talkies with shows of India’s first talkie Alam Ara. In 2006, the Film Federation of India and the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce chose it as the venue to celebrate 75 years of sound in cinema, and Elgin went back up on the map. Today it shows second and third runs of movies starring Mithun Chakravarthy, Govinda and Sunny Deol. It’s also the only way you’ll get to sit in a heritage building and watch a movie for only Rs 16. That and the charms of red bucket seats, swirling Ganesh beedi smoke, men dancing, singing and whistling, and the pleasure of watching a movie being projected through a 112-year-old carbon arc device. Shivaji Road, Shivaji Nagar. 2286-5024. Show Timings are 11.45am, 3.30pm, 6.30pm and 9.30pm. Fine Art Prints for Peanuts - Ever fancied an Andy Warhol on your kitchen wall, Van Gogh's 'Café Terrace at Night Time' up in your living room, a Pollock serigraph for the library, an Escher drawing and a Lautrec 'Moulin Rouge' poster to complete a collection that includes all the works of Dali, Picasso and Monet? If you fancy turning your living room into the Louvre, but don’t have the billions to wag your fingers at a Christie’s auctioneer, the man to go to in Bangalore would be Prakash Aswani. Back in the ‘90s, in the earliest days of the CD invasion that soon witnessed the annihilation of all stars on cassette, Prakash Aswani became the provider of all albums yet unavailable to manic college-going collectors. From recorded copies on tape of Metallica and U2's Achtung Baby to Dr. Dre and Apache Indian, Aswani supplied them all out of his shop on CMH Road in Indiranagar. Today, Aswani, a former RJ (he hosted a retro music show on Radio Indigo), sells fine art prints sourced from repositories across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York out of his home in Dollars Colony. What makes his proposition closest to that of a steal, is the fact that you can now own copies of some of the best works in the history of art for as little as Rs 2,500 a pop. While he does deal in art, Aswani is not a fan of wordy discussions about the stuff he sells. He is bluntly clear about how his business can irk creative folk. 'An artist today will look to sell one of his works for anywhere between Rs 4-5 lakhs. Where I'm looking to sell hundreds of copies – for cheap – of originals that are now worth millions.' 435, 9th Cross, 5th Main, RMV 2nd Stage, Dollars Colony. 98452-14321. www.fineart.in Gavi Gangadareshwara Cave Temple - Back in 2001, MS Umesh, an installation artist working out of Bangalore, stumbled upon on an idea for a short film, titled 'between myth and history' (sic), that would take him back to his earliest days as a boy in Chamrajpet, accompanying his elders to the Gavi Gangadareshwara Cave Temple. The temple, an ancient monolith carved inside a natural cave on a hillock named Harirayanagudda, houses a legend about two 'secret' paths or tunnels – one, leading out to the temple town of Shivaganga in Tumkur district, and another heading all the way up to Kashi. What Umesh decided to do, in his attempt to harness his curiosity, and for the sake of his art, 'discover an abstract space' and provide a 'physical connect' to such history, was to film a 10-minute long walk, delving into the darkest innards of this cave, barefoot, with a lit candle. The myth about underground paths apart, the temple is thronged every year on Makar Sankranti (January 14th/15th) for an auspicious moment at dusk, when the sun's rays are said to pass right between the horns of the stone Nandi Bull placed outside the temple, and in turn illuminate the Shiva Linga inside. At the end of the film and his spooky walk through the cavernous temple, Umesh emerges, barefoot, with a lit candle, walking out of the Dom Im Berg tunnel in Graz, Austria, which today is a contemporary arts and culture centre, with history dating back to World War 2, when near 50,000 people are said to have survived Hitler's bombs in here. The 'magical' concept of hidden paths back home had, in essence, led him on an extended journey across the planet, says Umesh: 'If they say Kashi, then why not Austria?' The Gavi Gangadareshwara Temple is located behind the Ramakrishna Ashram, Bull Temple Road. Open from 7.30am to noon and from 5pm to 8.30pm. Hamam – pit stops on the carnal super highway, you most certainly won’t find the city’s 30 hamams on a tourist map. Originally constructed as baths and rest houses (hamam in Persian means bath) for truckers cruising the highways, they now cater to cruising of an altogether different sort. Bangalore’s hamams are now the exclusive domain of the city’s eunuchs, who operate out of these dingy, decrepit structures, offering condoms for free (they plough through about 4,500 a month) and all other services for an appropriate price. When they are not dancing at weddings and ceremonies or begging at traffic lights, the city’s eunuchs operate as sex workers out of these hamams. A typical hamam has a massive terracotta stove at one corner, and this is used to heat water for truck drivers or other clients that want a post-coital bath. The rest of the building is divided into little rooms with a cot in each. The eunuchs who live in the hamams are an extremely clannish and closed community and will rarely entertain anyone that is not a paying client – ‘tips are okay, time pass is not’ as one eunuch put it. A typical example of a hamam can be found on Bazaar Street in Ulsoor. Ig Nobel Laureates – When Chittaranjan Andrade and BS Srihari, from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans), completed their paper titled, 'A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample', in 2001, they hardly expected to be conferred the Ig Nobel – the award for improbable research handed out each year at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. As I turned out, the Ig Nobel seemed justified, because at least in the ambit of its definition, what Andrade and Srihari had researched for a year was rather improbable – Rhinotillexomania is the medical term for compulsive nose picking. The Ig Nobel dishonour, of a telephone pad attached to two cans mounted on a cheap, wooden plaque, only certified the quirky quotient of these two psychiatrists' oddball juvenile revelation, having spent a year's research time to put a Q.E.D. on the theory that 'nose picking is a common activity among adolescents.' The research itself sat down a sample of 200 adolescents from four urban schools, to study how nose-picking frequency went up to over 20 times a day for near 8 per cent of the group, before revealing insights into 'other somatic habits' such as nail-biting, scratching in a specific spot, even pulling out of hair. Bangalore's most ill-famed expose had effectively closed the lid on how nose digging 'may merit closer nosologic scrutiny.' Needless to say, the two researchers refused to go down hushed up about their discredited work, with strident statements about there being 'little world literature on nose-picking behaviour in the general population.' Andrade's infamous quote goes, 'Some people poke their noses into other people's business; I poke my business into other people's noses.' Jal Bhavan – Imagined as a rainbow spanning the distance between two undulating hillocks, Jal Bhavan is easily one of the city’s more lurid architectural disasters. Designed by Anil Bhaskaran, a leading Bangalore architect, Jal Bhavan is termed, rather unfairly, as ‘the city’s ugliest building,’ and more aptly, as ‘that building that looks like someone dropped a giant turbine on Bannerghatta Road.’ Jal Bhavan houses the offices of the Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board, the implementing body for water supply and underground drainage schemes in 208 urban centres in the state (barring Bangalore.) It also houses the offices of the magazine you hold in your hands. 6, Bannerghatta Road, BTM Layout 1st Stage. 2653-9003 Kale Pehlwan ki Gardi – This wrestling school in Shivajinagar (on the same street as Elgin Talkies. See E) is a 100 years old, but less than a 100 people in the city know about it. Inside, past a narrow, dim corridor, you enter a small, open courtyard with the wrestling pit and its stone cylinders, neck weights and other kusti related paraphernalia. To its left is the kitchen, where Mohammad Malik practices the other art this place is known for – cooking. While the wrestlers train between 5 am and 8 am and 4 pm onwards, gourmands, autorickshaw drivers, mechanics, students and bus conductors jostle for space during lunch hours at Kale Pehlwan’s. You could choose to sit facing the kitchen, the far wall or the wrestling pit, the last being the best. Friday is the best day to visit for fragrant, after-namaaz biriyani, but make sure you reach early – you will be relegated to straw mats spread over the sand in the wrestling pit if you reach after 1 pm. At Rs 45, the mutton biriyani is served in generous portions and always has at least two large pieces of spoon-tender meat. The seer fish fry (Rs 50 for a belly slice) is shallow fried to perfection and arrived hot and moist. The mutton chops (two for Rs 40), which can make any decent tabak maaz descend into existential angst, is marinated, and pan-grilled so each section of meat is ringed with charred, crispy edges. Obtaining a table, grappling with the other patrons and shouting for your meal at Kale Pehlwan’s can be as gruelling as any wrestling match, so prepare yourself for some rough-housing. Also, women are advised to cover up, and vegetarians to stay home. Ustad Kale Pehelwan ki Gardi, Shivaji Lane (near Elgin), Shivaji Nagar. Mohammad Malik: 98866-77695 Lavelle Road - There is a certain gentleman who whirls in his grave every time an autorickshaw driver utters his name, and this happens a few hundred times on any given day. Mangled verbalisations of this name range from ‘lovely’ to ‘le-velly’ to ‘la-vely,’ making this the most mispronounced road name in Bangalore (followed by Cockburn Road ). And the rickshaw driver would stare at you in disbelief if you did get the pronunciation right, which is ‘la-vell’. The gentleman in question is Michael F Lavelle and the road that bears his name is not just another street, it is Bangalore’s link to the Kolar Gold Fields and the Anglo-Indian Community. According to the Rice Gazetteer, "In that year 1873 Mr MF Lavelle, a resident in Bangalore, retired from the army, with some knowledge of geology, applied to the Government for the exclusive privilege of mining in the Kolar District, his thoughts being principally directed to the possibility of finding coal. His request was granted on certain terms. On these conditions, Mr Lavelle commenced operations by sinking a shaft in 1875, near Oorgaum.” Being a shrewd businessman he gathered other interested parties and formed the Kolar Concessionaires and amassed a large enough amount of money to start mining, the initial quest was for coal, but having heard rumours of Tipu’s soldiers coming upon gold in the area, Lavelle began to look for the precious metal, and soon enough, stumbled upon vast quantities. With the money he made from gold, Lavelle bought himself enough land in the cantonment area to have a whole road named after him. Lavelle Road begins at Richmond Circle and ends at Jewels De Paragon, it is approximately 2300 metres. Monkey Tops – Before they hared it back to Blighty, the British gave Bangalore an architectural innovation that is unique to this city – the monkey top. These ornate wooden trappings over windows of old Bangalore bungalows are A-shaped with a flagstaff spike on the peak and you’ll find the few remaining ones in the cantonment part of town – Fraser Town, Cooke Town, Cox Town, Richard’s Town and a few on Rest House Road. Wade through British-era books and government records and you’ll learn that they were constructed to prevent marauding monkeys from entering houses, while also providing them with a perch to consume the fruits they tore off tree-tops. While monkey tops were at first a functional aspect to building construction, they soon began to serve a decorative purpose, with each home-owner individualising the design to enhance his building façade. Eventually, the monkey top entered official government marking, with the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission deciding to incorporate it into its logo. Noon Wines - In a city caught in the cusp of nomenclature battles, it’s not surprising that Noon Wines is also known as Scottish Pub is also known as Scotties. But that depends on where you’re sitting at this narrow, intimate pub on St Mark’s Road. If you’re indoors, listening to music and straining to see the wine that smells so strongly of tomorrow’s hangover, you’re in Noon Wines. If you’re outdoors, not listening to music, but listening to the very potent wine as it makes its way down your gullet, you’re in Scotties. As you place your first order in Noon Wines, you will be informed by a scared-looking waiter that they only serve three large wines per woman. This waiter is not to be confused with Eshwar, who you must immediately ask for. Eshwar will then flash you a smile and get you pretty much whatever you want and however much you want of it. Even if you’re a woman. While you’re enjoying the friendly monster in your glass, ask Eshwar for a plate of Chips Masala. It’s not on the menu, but that only means it’s out winning an award somewhere. Rs 60 for a large glass of the finest and only house wine you can buy at a pub in Bangalore, Rs 20 for the tangy Chips Masala, and Eshwar’s winning smile and hospitality at no cost at all. 17, Vasavi Complex, St Mark’s Road. 2221-5002 Opera House – Arul Mani, arguably Bangalore’s finest quizzer and arcana buff, says the Opera House at the corner of Brigade Road and Residency Road has screened such classics as Avaluderavakul (Her Nights), Pavam Krooran (Poor, Cruel Man), Kanana Sundari (A movie about an Amazonian sex goddess) and the genre-definer: Uncle’s Fault (See X). But before it became known to Bangalore as the theatre that screens soft porn (which in real terms meant three or four full frontal scenes spliced into a regular regional language film), Opera House (it’s officially referred to as New Opera House, but Bangaloreans dispense with the ‘New’) screened run of the mill blockbusters in the 60s (with regular listings in the Deccan Herald) and earlier still, in the ‘30s, served as a ballroom and a theatre for musicals during the Raj. Though Opera House is shut to the public now, with a little casual conversation with the guards, you will, in all likelihood be let into the premises, which have remained untouched since its closure in ________. Inside, the theatre is large, dark and surprisingly cold. The teak balustrades and floorboards remain, as does the feeling that you’ve just stepped into a long-abandoned whaling ship. Pleasure, Gangamma’s – In this city’s lexicon of secrets, the letter P would stand for three related things, and they would all be defined by one thing: Gangamma’s Pleasure. A now defunct rock covers band, Gangamma’s Pleasure was named for the band’s house cleaner, Gangamma, who chanced upon a stash of marijuana in the jam room. Gangamma’s Pleasure, in a sense, is a distillation of this city’s sub-culture, one that roots itself firmly in rock music and it defines the three other Ps – Palace Grounds, pot parks and Pecos. Palace Grounds is where all the major gigs are held: Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Joe Satriani, Mark Knopfler, Megadeth, Roger Waters, the Rolling Stones, Scorpions, and Sting are among the few who have rocked into Bangalore’s night sky from out of here. One section of these grounds – which slots the largest spaces on the city’s outdoor cultural calendar, is constant to a Disney-park Fun World setup. Pecos is a no-frills pub off Brigade Road, that has over the last quarter of a century, gathered around it a near-cult following. The interiors have not changed much over the years; wall art from the Grateful Dead heyday, posters and strung up rock paraphernalia aside, the corner on the right as you walk in has always been reserved for pamphlets announcing upcoming shows, news about performances, and requests for musicians at large. That college students for generations have sworn by the music at Pecos is no secret. The late Sunday breakfast here remains a prime time affair. Pecos history includes mentions of rock groups forging time-honoured band alliances, beer drenched evenings of songs scripted, sung, and dissected at length; even ‘major dude’ groupies pulling up to fisticuffs outside. Pecos patrons have witnessed the formative years of a rock ‘n’ roll and pub culture, all the way to wasted, defunct rock band members tagging inconsolably bawling baby boys in the pub. Pot parks are Bangalore’s worst kept secret. The garden city tag goes a long way with the tight-lipped presence of resident ‘ganja parks’ in prominent areas of the town, blacklisted and hounded by ‘mufti’ patrol cops, as pass-time bases of popular peddlers, and giving room to a widely apparent frequency of smoking run-ins. The most popular of these are on Rest House Road, Jayanagar 7th Block, Coles Road and off Ulsoor Lake. Pecos: 34, Off Brigade Road, Rest House Road. 2558-6047 Palace Grounds: Near Mount Carmel College, Vasanth Nagar. 2336-0818 Fun World, Palace Grounds. 2343-0496 Quizzing at the Daly Memorial Hall - Who would willingly impale themselves on something that goes 'How did words derived from the Latin for 'same', 'domination' and 'final' form a trio with half a health drink between the years 1980 and 1990?' There’s a rare breed endemic to Bangalore that would – the quizzers. They don't make a million, they don't top their graduating class, they don't find trophy-wives; few get to drive their own cars and even fewer get into the Civil Services, and unlike all other sportsmen, none of them ever gets any. When they sit in Koshy's, they crouch around laptops and let out strangled yells and hoots of laughter and drink much ginger tea and are completely unaffected by the hottosity of women who descend from whatever cloud to frequent that dive on a Sunday afternoon. Once a month, they may be found in the few small halls that the city still has –Daly Memorial and Canara Union—doing the same thing, in greater numbers and far more loudly. At pubs such as Pecos and Noon Wine (See N), they are immediately identifiable by the fact that all their conversations begin with phrases like 'Odyssey last year', or 'Total Peter' and 'Sexy Funda'. And when they do get happy, they may be heard singing ribald ditties where talent has been expended in finding words that rhyme with the surname O'Brien. Open quizzes have been organized in Bangalore for over 25 years by the Karnataka Quiz Association. Their quizzes are not about memory or how much you know, they're about the art of guessing answers from impossibly convoluted questions. If you want to know more, you could check their website: http://kqaquizzes.org. And the answer to the question we began with is The Bourne Trilogy (Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum) begun in 1980 and concluded in 1990 by Robert Ludlum. Karnataka Quiz Association: Arul Mani. 98452-06690. arul.m...@gmail.com Canara Union: 42, 8th Main, 13th Cross, Malleswaram. 2334-2625 Daly Memorial Hall: Nrupathunga Road, opposite Yavanika. 2221-5034 Rent a costume - At Prabhat Kalavidaru, in over 70 years of being every stage and costume manager's dream store, the one most frequent order continues to be for productions of either the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. The complete army sized set of crowns, golden maces (in three sizes), chest plates, waist belts, armours, bow and arrows, faux jewellery, and entire dance troupe wardrobes. The kit for Lord Krishna depictions is perhaps the next most popular. As one of the city's quainter establishments, the history of Prabhat - an institution run by the Dasa brothers - runs deep into the days of India's freedom movement, and indeed, deeper into mythology. When the Dasa brothers moved in, in the early 1930s, they found themselves producing the earliest epic dance dramas in town. What possibly began as a sense of largesse – to lend out stage ware to budding artists and aspiring groups, soon became the makings of what is now a centre for every kind of theatre resource. Today, the orders include light-sound stage prop works, a studio recording facility, and even dancing classes. Third generation members of the family at their offices will tell you how the business is still largely about getting the characters in your play to look good on stage. What is underwhelming about this institution, and perhaps its worst kept secret too, is the fact that some of their oldest clients are now permanent fixtures on the Kannada theatre circuit, and some of them superstars of the celebrity kind too, having once looked the part in an act, thanks to the Dasa brothers' enterprise. 66, Jain Temple Street, VV Puram. 2669-7786 Subbamma Stores – Or Srinivasa Condiments, a hole-in-the-wall store sequestered in a lane off Gandhi Bazaar Main Road in Basavanagudi, is perhaps the only place in the country where Congress and Communist coexist without constantly bickering. Congress, in this case is the name that Bangalore has bestowed upon spicy, roasted split peanuts and Communist, the milder, red-chilli coated peanuts endemic to Karnataka. According to KV Anant Rao, the man who owns the store, the name Congress came to be associated with roasted peanuts during a Congress rally in Karnataka in 1948, the same year the shop opened for business. “Party workers really took to these peanuts. They were in constant demand, and soon, people started asking us for ‘those Congress peanuts.’ We had this other variant, the read-chilli coated whole-peanuts, which came to be called Communist because of their colour,” he says. Apart from the roasted peanuts, the store sells voluminous quantities of fried snacks like murukku (deep-fried dough rings), puri (spiced puffy rice) and obbat (stuffed sweet chapattis), which are made fresh daily at their kitchen in Hosakerehalli near Banashankari, and pickles that are sourced from a women's cooperative in Shimoga. Rao handles the money and his brother KV Ramachandran doles packets of coconut sweets, murukku, appalams (papads), pickles, spicy and chips to customers. The savouries cost around Rs 16 a packet and obbat costs Rs 20. Inflation has pushed the price up by Rs 2, says Rao. Packets are bought, packed carefully and despatched across the globe to homesick Bangaloreans craving a crunchy fix. Rao says he has no plans of exporting murukku or expanding. First time visitors to the store would do well to ask for directions as it is easy to miss. You’d also be advised to go between 9 am and 2 pm or 4.45 pm and 10 pm, as the store-owner shuts for siesta. 92, HB Samaja Road, Gandhi Bazaar, Basavanagudi. 2667-7493 Tibetans – Despite two treaties, reconciliatory gestures, countless Free Tibet bumper stickers and one very vocal Richard Gere, China and Tibet continue to sit on either side of a fence both real and ideological, with no resolution to Tibet's demand for complete autonomy in sight. It's perhaps time the two took a look at the Bangalore Model to end all their troubles. Eat at any one of the many Chinese restaurants in the city and your waiter, cook, cashier or cleaner is most likely to be a Tenzing rather than a Tan Lee. Each Tibetan passing off comfortably as a Chinese national. The first Tibetans began coming into the state in the '60s. They settled down in colonies in Bylukuppe, Hunsur, Kollegal and Hubli - all a few hours drive from Bangalore. Over 50,000 at the last count; the largest Tibetan refugee community outside Dharamsala. Numbering at around a thousand at any given point in the city, most of the Tibetans in Bangalore take on Chinese personas and work as chefs, waiters, hair stylists and call centre employees catering specifically to Chinese clients. As is mandatory with the community, there are 50 families who are members of the Tibetan Sweaters sellers Association and bring in their stock of knits every season. If you want to take a look at what else the community is up to in Bangalore, you need to go to Tibet Plaza on Rest House Road – the mothership of cheap designer knock-offs, AC/DC T-shirts, Che Guevara merchandise. And on the second floor, steamy momos at Taste of Tibet. Taste of Tibet: 5, Indo-Dubai Plaza, Rest House Road. 4147-8237 Undertakers to the City - The Snaize Brothers have been a Bangalore institution for 135 years; they were first located in the heart of town, at 159 Brigade Road (now Royal Mota Arcade) and in 1986, moved to 51, Norris Road. Though burying the dead in consecrated ground wasn’t their first occupation – in 1873, Clarissa Snaize, a widow, decided to start a shoe factory, which ran up losses and closed – the business they eventually got into became vital to the city’s functioning. Clarissa Snaize realised her measuring skills could be better applied to coffins and the quality of her caskets went down very well with the Royal Garrison stationed in the city at the time. She handed it down to her grandsons, who gave it the name Snaize Brothers – Funeral Furnishers and Monumentalists, and a generation later, Margaret Snaize and her son Anil Makhija took over the business. Clichéd as it may seem, a meeting with Margaret Snaize is as tragicomic as an episode of Six Feet Under. For one, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Ruth Fisher, a lead character in the serial who, in episode after episode, displays determination and optimism while surrounded by death and sorrow. Snaize, like Fisher has a voice that has a little tremor to it, but is yet assertive. “We are not interested in advertising, there seems to be a lack of dignity attached to death nowadays, it is a special service not the cut-throat business it has become,’ Snaize says. The range of services Snaize Brothers offers include teak veneer caskets, hearse services, floral wreaths, engravings on tombstones or name plaques and refrigerated glass caskets. 51, Near Nanjappa Circle, Norris Road, Richmond Town. 2221-2140 Vijay Thiruvadi's Green Walk – Not once in two years has it rained on the Sunday mornings that Vijay Thiruvadi leads his group on the Green Walk in Lal Bagh. And judging by the energy levels we witnessed one Sunday morning, not even the rain will deter the 5,000 people who have signed up to be on the walk. Every week, at 7 am, the group follows Thiruvadi as he traverses the green expanse of Lal Bagh, stopping every now and then to introduce the Ficus' and the frangipanis. You pick up lungs-full of oxygen and interesting stories about the plants, animals and all things in between. Take the one about the oldest rock in the park, which as Thiruvadi puts it, is half as old as the earth itself. The rock is now designated a National Geological Monument and is dated as being 3,000 million years old. You would do well to ignore the distracting couples cavorting in the park and let Thiruvadi bring you up to speed on Lal Bagh's collection of trees and plants - there are trees like the Araucarias from Chile, the candle tree, elephant apple, the lush rain tree and a number of exotic palms. No two walks are alike and Thiruvadi often alters routes to take the groups to the lake or to see a rare bamboo flowering, accompanied by anecdotes like how bamboo raised from one mother plant flowers at the same time, no matter where in the world it is planted. You look at towering pines from Australia and the thick banyan, branches of which reach out in a green embrace which, thrive in Lal Bagh. Then there are cypresses from Mexico, China, Java and Europe, junipers from Africa, wisterias from Swaziland, rosewoods from Bolivia, fig trees from Java. Despite his deep and abiding understanding of all things arboreal, Thiruvadi is at a loss for words when he has to explain why Ramesh who loves Meetha had to express his ardour by carving her name on the highest branches of a banyan tree. The three hour trek ends with a brunch at the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms, where green walkers never have to wait for a place. The walk is conducted every Sunday and the group of the day assembles at the base of the Lal Bagh rock (entry through the Double Road Gate). Vijay Thiruvadi 98450-68416. See www.bangalorewalks.com. 7am to 10am on Sundays. World Cinema at the National Market – It all started with pornography. Bhasker (name changed), one of the several sellers of pirated movie DVDs in National Market, Gandhi Nagar, was doing very well for himself peddling what he considered were fine examples of girl-on-girl action, when he realised that many of his customers were seeking out a particular kind of girl-on-girl action. Or ‘story porn’ as he began to call it. Bhasker began to shop around for those specific movies – ones that had explicit sex with a plot to lend gravitas – and realised they were made by someone called Almodovar. And someone called Bertolucci. And someone else called Winterbottom. Bhasker quickly realised there was a large and growing demand for world cinema and began to amass titles from every corner of the world (he didn’t have to travel further than the nearest broadband connection and Bit Torrent). Though there are several other bootleggers in National Market, Bhasker (the changed name shouldn’t be a hindrance; ask around for any Almodovar film, and you’ll be directed to his shop) has one of the largest collections of movies for sale in Bangalore - ranging from Miyazaki’s finest work to every agonizing minute of Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Though Bhasker knew little about the movies he was selling when he started off, he has enhanced his knowledge significantly over the years. Now, if you walk up to him and ask for Vivre sa vie, he’ll tell you most of Godard’s work is crap. 5th Main, Gandhi Nagar. Near Tribhuvan Theatre. Xtreme Urban Running - Every Sunday, at 7 am, a group of around 10 men gathers at the Jayanagar Shopping Complex, which houses various government offices and shops. Led by Ashwin Mohan, the group breaks into a sprint and in a few seconds reaches the first stairwell inside the building. Mohan leaps over balustrades, scales walls that are at least 10 feet high and with feline grace, rolls, vaults, twirls, trundles and barrels across concrete surfaces, wood-panelled walls, metal barricades and reinforced parapets. That early in the morning, the only audience Mohan and the group of urban runners has is sweepers, newspaper boys and milkmen, all of whom stare in bewilderment at these leaping men. Mohan is Bangalore’s only practitioner and tutor of parkour, the French sport of urban free running. “Jayanagar Complex is easily our favourite place to practice and run, it offers several interesting surfaces and spaces,” he says, adding, “But whenever we can, we try and do parkour in private residences. It’s interesting, the expressions you see on people’s faces and their reactions when you leap into their homes: they range from amazement to abuse. But we’re gone before anyone really knows what’s happening.” Mohan includes parkour as a prerequisite for many of the martial arts courses he teaches and insists that his ever growing tribe of students require close attention and discourse before they take on the city’s high-rise buildings. “They have the balls to do it. But the practice of parkour takes technique,” he says. 3 Curley Street, Richmond Town. 98453-96360. Email: shoot.figh...@hotmail.com Yelahanka - The 1990 edition of the Bangalore District Gazetteer (chief editor: Suryanath U Kamath) is a black, 1108-page epic that normally walls itself into musty racks in stuffy corridors of governance and is the best reckoner for anyone looking to leaf through the city's historic secrets. It looks like a law omnibus and sells fewer than two copies a year. It's the book that will tell you that the founders of Bangalore, hailed as the Kempe Gauda line of chiefs and popularly referred to as the Yelahanka Nada Prabhus, were all descendants of Chief Jaya Gauda. That Bangalore was their capital for 101 years, from 1537 to 1638 AD. And that Yelahanka, as one of the oldest ‘headquarters’ in town, may derive its name from the 'yelava' tree (in Kannada), which lists itself in botany as the 'Malabaricum, Bombax'. Instead of wading through the books’ tedious prose, a more exciting approach to exploring Bangalore’s past, would be to negotiate the equally tedious Bangalore-Bellary highway, reach the fort area, make your way through what remains of the ramparts and stop at the front wall of the Anjaneya temple, where four hero-stones built into the wall depict war scenes; Bengaluru, circa 1410. The Bangalore District, Karnataka State Gazetteer is available for Rs.100 at the Government Central Book Depot. The Bangalore District, Karnataka State Gazetteer is available for Rs.100 at the Government Central Book Depot. Temples in the area: Chowdeshwari Devi Temple, Mathikere. 2337-9167 Raghavendra Guru Swamy Mandali, Mathikere. 2337-6269 Kalika Durga Parameshwari Temple, Vidyaranyapura. 2364-0048 Rangam Srimath Andavan Ashramam, Seshadripuram. 2331-6812 Iskcon Jagannath Mandir, Seshadripuram. 2226-2024 Zac O’Yeah – All things being equal, Zac O’Yeah will take his real name to the grave. Ask him what his given name is and he’ll merely shrug, preferring to talk about his life and this city instead. However, this Finnish-born, part-time pop star, sometimes-Hindi-speaking, full-time writer of Swedish thrillers will tell you that he is as much a part of Bangalore as the other 25 aspects of the city described from A to Y. His name began to change and adopt different forms when he was 15 and a guitarist with the German band Twice a Man. He decided to retire when he was 25 and after designing sets and lights for plays, answered a call for travel writers. He travelled through India and published his first book: India: A Personal Pathfinder to Culture (1995; translated title). Before the book came out, he got off a train in Bangalore in 1992 and never left. “Something about the city – perhaps the mix of east and west, or maybe the laidback lifestyle, or just the nice combination of bookshops and beer pubs – set it apart from other cities in the world,’ he says. He is often seen at Dewar’s on Cockburn Road (See D) - so that he can ‘occasionally feel that Bangalore too has a past.’ When not at Dewar’s, O’Yeah writes Swedish thrillers out of his RT Nagar home. His first was Pajazzo (1997) followed by The Mutilated (1999), Guru (2004) and Tandoori Moose (2006). Though you have to be more than conversant with Swedish to wrap your head around the plots and sub-plots in his books, O’Yeah says if talks with his publishers succeed, we may soon see translations in English on the shelves. V 'Naresh' NARASIMHAN Architect - Principal Venkataramanan Associates 10/2, O'Shaughnessy Road Langford Gardens Bangalore - 560 025,India ph: +91 80 4030 3050 fax:+91 80 4030 3030 www.vagroup.com P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
