Bangalore

After more than ten years spent in Bengaluru, we've learned as much to avoid food outside. Eating food outside hasn't been the same in Bengaluru as it was several years back. However, there are few exceptions. Maiya's is one such restaurant. At Maiya's you get the traditional flavors of Udupi, Mangalore. The food is of better quality. If the South Indian food gets boring, there are always pastries, some bakery stuff and Gujarathi style restaurant for a change.

Not just that, the restaurant is famous for the coffee served in real silver cups. And for the lunch and dinner, a drink is also usually served in silver cups.

Yesterday, after some time spent with people who had loads of ideas, space and resolution for pushing 'FOSS' in state and central government, we had a quick meal at "Chung's". Of all that we quickly gobbled up, that one recipe which had rice in it (schezwan?) was really the 'eatable' for me.

We then quickly headed towards Nagesh Hegde's farm. A brief stop was to get some Ayurvedic medicine that was out of stock at my place. What was supposed to be an evening visit became a dinner time visit to Nagesh Hegde's place. Making sure the late timing was okay with NH, we cruised on almost zero traffic Magadi Road only to find that the bend near Tavarekere was badly bruised with some repair work that seems chronic to that stretch.

Late night travel on the outskirts of the city isn't all that fun except for the cool, clean air. The darkness on the road, absence of road signs make it difficult to find way even on the familiar roads on the city outskirts. A crematorium as the landmark to the rescue! - we were cruising back on a slightly narrow road towards the farm.

I don't know how many of us would remember the 501, Nirma and similar soap bars that had become so much a part of life back in those days when Rin, Surf Excel or the fancy German detergents had still not entered the market. I remember people taking those detergent bars with them to nearby water source to wash their clothes. Much has changed now, but I still remember the fragrance of 501 or even Nirma. It has been years since I last saw one, though.

Today, I stopped by a grocery store in a village on the way home. An auto driver was unloading his stock of "N S" bar. It was like glancing back at this historical, outdated soap but the shop owner and the auto driver had a different story to tell. In my curiosity, I ended up taking a photo of this while the auto driver, who looked pretty curious at my curiosity, went observing in pride - "This, saar, is still the best soap you can ever get! It used to cost just naalkaaNi" (25 paise).

And to my surprise, people in this village seem to have sticked to their brand for all these years and the shopkeeper confirmed that by telling me how people keep coming for more of this.

It was a busy weekend, last one. On Saturday morning I had to dust curtains, vacuum the floor of the entire house as my sister had called up and said she would be moving in for couple of days to be with mother. She wouldn't like it if it isn't clean and things aren't organized! And then Murali was here to discuss about Tech Sampada, which is a new initiative on Sampada that we're coming up with (with an ambitious plan of getting people to write about technology, and developments surrounding technology in Kannada). Interviews we had recorded with Prof. U R Rao, Prof. C N R Rao (in Kannada) would be featured during the launch of the portal.

But of course, Saturday evening was the program where Professor Eben Moglen was to give a talk. I was listed as a guest on that program despite me insisting strongly that I would rather just join in like everyone else. Professor's talk was enlightening. The clarity with which he spoke was so good that people listening to him seemed overwhelmed and filled with admiration. Not many among that audience, I bet, would have known much about the Professor before. The event was arranged by Avadhi originally for Kannada bloggers, but I couldn't see many familiar faces in the audience. Many of those who participated were from the Free Software Users Group. And I felt that there wasn't much Kannada audience too. Hence, when my turn came for the talk (and since I was supposed to talk in Kannada), I just kept it to the basics and spoke for 10 minutes or so.

Low intensity or not, would just condemning the terror attacks suffice? There has to be some serious rethinking of how media portrays acts like these, how we as people react to it and how much of it we remember enough to do something about it. What strikes blatantly though is how devastation and death becomes just the content for News Channels and withers away in the memory of the public.

When much was said about Malya's Royal Challengers team being a test team, there could have been some immediate damage control. Instead the team composition sailed half way through the tournament tasting flops with the likes of Joshi (!!), AnilKumble (!) and Kallis. They might be classy cricketers, but the lack of aggression in a T20 scenario is conspicuous. Was it Dravid's overconfidence that did them in?