CTR re-visited

I had been through the revered gates once. And the milling crowds had dissuaded me two times. Non-descript and unpretentious, it stands oblivious to the endless traffic that weaves past it in an all too obvious urban frenzy. I was mildly hungry and it was purely incidental that it occurred at the revered corner. Perhaps, it’s a hunger that most if not all at Malleswaram will vouch for, when they reach this neck of the woods. It is after all, one of the Holy Trinity – the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost of masala dosa.

CTR, Malleswaram has stood the test of time. And their Benne Masala Dosa is probably as divine as divinity can get. We jostled past a waiting crowd and scanned the seating arena. Blank walls and expectant faces – waiting like pilgrims wait for the pearly gates to open. It’s old world fairness. You jostle around and find place for yourself. Today was a lucky day; a day when being at the roulette table would have been as good an idea as being at CTR. Two gentlemen rise and we slide in, like in a musical chair. What a fair world.

Traffic flowed ceaselessly on the main thoroughfare. And the little boy, who came for the order, flashed no menu card. The order is placed and Nicky re-iterates the ‘bring the coffee with the dosa’ routine that is very much the style. I talked like I always do; about some inane happening that both of us at that point were hardly interested in. The dosa does not take time; and it probably should not, the waiting crowd will cry out loud. Small, golden and crispy – every morsel tastes of soaked in butter. Like some divine entity the butter is never visible and yet all pervasive. Put one morsel into your mouth and it appears mysteriously in your hands.

At CTR, people hover around you as you eat, like defenders at the Arsenal goal mouth; silently hoping that you would finish at the earliest; praying you are not one of those gluttons who would order for one more. We just take our time and deliver justice to what is on the plate. The trick is in being in oneness with your food; and ignoring the unnecessary. After all, at CTR you earn your right to be where you are. By the time we get to the wash basin and back, different men and women are already gracing our seats and waiting expectantly for their plate of happiness to be delivered.

Twenty-two rupees is what it takes. But the old Bangalore experience as a television commercial selling credit cards once said – is probably priceless.

The old neighborhood

The 1980’s is a long time back. So long time back, that I can only think of it in grayscale. Nascent memories; many of which I think, are mere fancy sub conscious fabrications and nothing more, flash by on recall like reality itself. Like say, images of me shrouded in a blanket and gasping for air on that ferry to the ancestral home. Grandmother had died. I was but a few months old. Winds lashing. Rain pouring down in angry torrents. Signs apparently were so ominous, that even the oarsman feared for the little one’s life. But as it appears, the little one gasped; and gasped hard, and lived on to tell this tale.

But wait a minute. I was but a few months old at that time. And there is no way I can have a visual image of that scene. Funnily enough though, I do. Etched, clear and crystal. How can that ever be so, ponders the pragmatic side of me. Pat comes the answer. No Freudian logic involved here. The image is but a picture reconstructed from oft repeated hearsay I say. Conjured up by the creative mind, to scale up to the melodrama that the scene demanded. That’s all.

Ok, disclaimer. The reader is at this stage forewarned, that if you find me speaking eloquent about the early eighties, Woodstock 69 and the man on the moon, remember, it’s merely reconstructed from other people’s stories. So if you happen to spot something to the effect of ‘When I was a year old, I remember the blooming gulmohars lining the promenade. Crimson and lilac, fluttering in the wind like colours on a painter’s canvas……..’, remember it could very well be bullshit.

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The Bangalore real estate scene in the sixties was as lukewarm as lukewarm can be. People gently enquired in good quintessential Bangalore spirit, if you wanted a plot of land in ‘modern day as costly as Sunset Boulevard’ Indiranagar. ‘Why don’t you take it sir; you can pay me later’, some shortsighted gentleman had offered father. Circumspect and risk averse, dad very myopically replied ‘Very generous of you sir. But I am fine, thank you. And further more, who will stay so far’. And those were the days when the wallets were thin and aspirations of settling down in the city minimal. (Talk about foresight and sound financial planning. Godammit.)

A decade or so later, father was still working in Bangalore. And when familiarity with the city and matrimony, both happened, he eventually decided to buy this flat which has been home for the last 27 years. It was spanking new, cousin tells me. And the strong smell of whitewash ensured the cold that I perennially had, stayed with me like an alter ego.

A wild undergrowth of parthenium flourished in the neglected land in front of our multistoried building in those days. ‘I have seen snakes in there’, cousin claimed confidently of a distant past which I am sure he never did see. But whether it was that or the constant tirade of ‘how many times to tell you not to go near those bushes chasing the ball. You will end up with rashes I tell you’, I do not know, but the early days were all spent playing along the fringes and hoping the ball did not roll into the uninviting wilderness.

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As years ticked by, and the school routine kicked in, I remember the parthenium shrubs had cleared out. A barbed wire fencing, made a feeble attempt by the corporation to convert the clearing into a park. And whether it was the grass or the gravel I know not, but the rubber ball used to turn at Shane Warnian proportions in our evening games of cricket. We would come back home and keep records; cousin and me. And he would always claim my 100 against Azib, the neighborhood bloke would not qualify. ‘You ran the last 20 runs without even hitting the ball’, he would assert himself. ‘But it was getting dark and he said it was ok. I swear.’, I would argue. What an unfair world it was, in those days.

We shifted to playing at grounds further away from home as we grew a bit older. It somehow seemed a little too childish to play in front of your own home. We were big boys now you see. And what’s more, the cover drives now had more power, so why put your own window panes at risk.

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The rains washed down. The occasional hailstorms showered. The sun on summer days shined unrelenting. The plasters came off. And the odd pipes broke. The storm drains overflowed and new kids replaced old ones on the same track where the ball spinned square. Familiar people disappeared, new ones appeared. You walk down the flight of stairs and it still at times transports you back to images in grayscale. It’s still the same old neighborhood but in a changed time. And there will always be memories of a distant past; hidden in every bend and turn.

But for now, it’s time for me to disappear like all those people who disappeared before me. Into some place new, where someone else will sigh and tell – ‘old faces disappear and new ones appear’.

Walking

I have been a walker all my life. For lack of money; for lack of transport or for the sheer lack of will to wait for public transport to arrive. Walking in a way liberated me from these petty dependencies; giving me that self reliant gusto to reach destinations on my own. Now if you’ve raised your eyebrows and mumbled ‘isn’t that shallow; aren’t you making too much out of this’, I’ll have to add it’s probably also got to do with upbringing.

Ever since I can remember, I had these pretty stories fed into me – of how my dad walked all the roads of big city Bangalore to learn how not to get lost. ‘I was 17 you see’, dad would say, ’and there was no one to show me the way. So I’d set off in the morning with half shorts and cotton shirt and learn all the routes by heart’. I’d listen to the story for the ‘n’th time with wide opened mouth and be inspired.

And inspired I had to be, for I was walked to school as a little fellow with bag baggage and neatly combed hair. But lest you start thinking I was this inspirational story like BBC reports of Sudanese kids walking miles for basic education, the plot’s a little different. And a little less innocent. And the little fellow me with slickly combed hair and name badge pinned up over a handkerchief was not an angel after all.

Barely ten steps from home, I’d feign inability to walk any further and perch myself on top of my mom or my aunt or my dad or whoever it was who was doing the honors of taking me to school. So they walked the mile to school like tireless Sherpas, with me and my bag and my incessant whining for colorful candies and fly laden cut fruits.

But a hundred yards or so from school, I’d suddenly find a new found vigor to walk. ‘Put me down, I’ll walk’, I’d say and would find myself on the ground even before I completed the sentence. Walking was a labour all right but self respect was not worth putting up on the stake. Little me’s big image was under threat of nose diving like a hand made paper rocket if anyone were to see me perched up like a baby. The nursery social circles can get extremely damaging you see and I didn’t want to take a chance.