An unreliable socio-political history of wedding reception food in Madras

Somewhere in the mid-1990s, brides, grooms, their families, wedding planners, caterers, philosophers and sundry wedding attendees, buoyed by liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation, exposed to alien cultures and rituals, realised that since the wedding reception -- yes, that very reception that looks like a school annual day prize-giving ceremony, with the groom in a suit that will cease to fit him in two months, and the bride in an ultra-bling ghaghra-choli that she will be embarrassed to wear in any other environment -- was not a religious ceremony anyway, it was alright to serve food that wasn't, um, auspicious and upholding traditional Indian values.

So, out went the avials and the morekozhambus, and in came the soups, chats, cheese dosas and syrup-y gulab jamuns. The sit-down leaf-served meal made way for the posh buffet served from behind canopied counters. Why the canopy in indoor venues, you ask? Aesthetics, my friend -- a wedding must either be pleasing to the eye or overwhelming to the senses. A canopy can do either, depending on the mental state of the attendee. The servers, originally in crisp off-white veshtis (they used to be white when they were first worn) changed to random black-and-white plain or checked shirt-trouser-and-aprons and wore tall chef hats. Yes, chef hats. Aesthetics, again.

The banana leaf disappeared, and was replaced by mega-sized melmac or plastic plates that were large enough to hold one chapati or two puris or both, with an overpowering-masala gravy concealing microscopic paneer particles, one bowl of instant-diabetes-inducing sweet rasamalai, one collapsed dosa with accompanying sambar bowl and two chutneys, ladlefuls of "variety rice", pulao, bisi bele bath and curd rice, chips, a pappadum, and a minuscule quantity of red pickle.

Vegetable and fruit carving became the latest rage amongst the mamis as miscellaneous barn animals, cartoon characters, gods and goddesses were all sculpted out of carrots, watermelons, pumpkins and pineapples and placed on a central table in the middle of the hall with spurious sliced vegetables - god knows when they were sliced - posing as salads.

But this model had its disadvantages. Firstly, as the number of guests increased, the cleanliness of recycled plates became questionable. Many guests took to rubbing their plates dry with the provided tissue. Secondly, while the youth with their limitless energy went back for refills and repeated helpings, the middle-aged and the geriatric often under-ate. Thirdly, many guests left the hall without eating -- a serpentine queue (Serpent is too tame a word. Some of the queues are positively anacondaic, threatening to eat up the wedded couple by the time the photographer allows it to slither along) to wish the couple was bad enough, another one for the buffet was too much to handle and guests preferred rushing to the nearest Saravana Bhavan for some tame plate meals.

Then, at a wedding, a few years ago, I noticed a new trend. I trekked up to the dining hall to find, curiously, a sit-down meal. My inner mama was highly pleased and I rubbed my hands in glee, waiting for some hot kozhambu. First, they placed a paper cup next to the leaf and poured some thick red liquid in it -- no payasam, friends, instead we got tomato soup! Soon, a guy followed with two little bowls in his hand -- one had bread crumbs, and the other, I kid you not, corn mixture! To my horror, a rubbery rumali roti was tossed on to my leaf next. This was accompanied by a lot of gravy with four suspended grains of channa. I ate this gingerly, hoping we would be back to regular programming in the next round.

Then came some sticky ajinomoto-overloaded hakka noodles and tomato ketchup (which didn't taste much different from the soup, mind you). I witnessed the cosmic sight of two hundred Tamilian brahmins eating hot noodles off a banana leaf with their fingers. The culinary world-tour didn't end there. Immediately after the noodles came some cheesy baked vegetable, and I swear I tasted some aamchur masala in it. A friend sitting next to me actually ate the au gratin with mango pickle.

Then, we were served sambar rice with chips and curd rice. I breathed calmly for a couple of minutes, before the waiter shocked me again with the dessert menu -- again, on the leaf, to be eaten with bare hands -- of chocolate mousse cake and mango souffle!

That night, I didn't sleep. I really hoped this concept dinner, whatever that concept was, was an aberration. A one-off. A product of an overactive imagination of an under-utilised mind. But I was proved wrong.

In the three years since that meal, I have consumed off the hallowed banana leaf, naans and kulchas with side dishes as outlandish as malai kofta, manchurian, penne arabbiata (the flavour was more Ambattur than Arabia), and localised versions of kachoris, malpuas, vegetable momos, pav bhaji, cutlets, dhoklas, french fries, and even a bar of chocolate.

This encapsulates the spirit of 21st century India -- an India that's global yet local, an India that borrows but makes it's own, an India that's as outward-looking as inward-looking, a democratic masala of a nation that is, in every way, a true original. (Or so I console myself.)

***
This piece should appear sometime now in an in-house publication of some sort. If you are in that house, you can read it again. If you aren't, you can come back here to read it.

Vinod Agencies...

... or How I Fashion a Blog-post From Some Disorganised Thoughts on Cinema
***

I watched Agent Vinod last night, and it wasn't an eye-opener. In fact, I struggled to keep my eyes open every now and then. Let's start at the beginning, in Afghanistan, in that Desert of Doom or Death or Some Other Such Dangerous D-Word where a skirmish between 75 terrorists (Were they terrorists? Taliban? ISI? Business-sponsored interests?) and two Indian RAW dudes - one of them being a slightly overweight Ravi Kishen (whom I totally love, by the way) who looks like he hasn't run 500m at a stretch in two decades. The two Indian dudes win, of course, bharat mata ki jai etc., and while they are at it, they rescue a scantily-clad damsel trapped in a sack (bharat mata ki jai!). The action sequences are slick enough, if not particularly spectacular, and Saif and Ravi Kishen exchange endearingly silly banter. I want to see more of that woman (in both senses of the phrase). I am hooked.

But then, over-long opening credits ensue, taking one through not just the key actors and technicians, but also the lawyer and chartered accountants. This got me thinking - when the lawyers decide to do the legal work for the movie, do they say, "Boss, we'll waive some part of the fee if you credit us." I mean, I can't think of why a lawyer must be credited for a movie. He doesn't contribute to it creatively, does he? I mean, are the credits about everyone who did anything for the movie? Are they a vote of thanks? Or should they only credit people who worked on the movie itself? The fellow who brings chai for everyone on the set - should he be credited? What about the caterers? Or the hotels at the various locations where the unit stayed? The travel agents? Kareena's dentist?

You see what happened there? When the credits began, I was thinking of spies in Afghanistan. By the end of it, I am engrossed in the health of Kareena's gums. Detailed opening credits, a hat-tip to an earlier era of filmmaking, no doubt, probably work best when there is no action before them. It's like putting lengthy acknowledgments after a gripping prologue in a novel.

And this was the issue with Agent Vinod. There is some pretty engaging stuff - a smart joke here, a fun sequence there, some boiling tension - only to be killed by inconsistently paced and plotted stuff.

For instance, there was that brilliant scene with the Empress of Blandings-esque pet camel that Prem Chopra mercy kills with a heavy heart and moist eyes. There was a silliness to this scene, yes, but it was pitched and timed perfectly that I couldn't stop laughing. Was I the only one who thought Prem Chopra as David Kazaan was himself a bit Lord of Emsworthy - slightly out of sync with the world around him (he gets conned by Vinod, Iram and one man he believes is his own - the Colonel), slightly old, slightly beyond his prime, slightly clueless.

The camel made another appearance, as the password to a nuclear bomb in the last scene. There, it was just downright silly. And, somehow, not funny. The greatest password to defuse a nuclear bomb in all cinematic history still remains "Dulhan ki bidayi ka waqt badalna hai" from the seminal 16 December. Not only did the bomb in that movie require a password, it required the password to be spoken in Gulshan Grover's voice. The bomb has been smuggled into a college fest (yes, a college fest - who would expect a terrorist attack in an engineering college!) as "musical equipment", and Gulshan Grover immediately does what every terrorist does before launching a nuclear attack. He plays the drums. Fakely. With an expression conveying heightened calm and fulfillment. Like he's just slept with three supermodels at the same time. (If you don't believe me, watch the movie here.)

And how do they get him to say the password? They have a phone conversation with him where they "trick" him into saying the relevant words out of context. So ingenious. So yummy. 

You know the other great thing about 16 December? The "agents" are not coolly RAW or Intelligenec Bureau or any such thing. They are from the vastly underrated and underrepresented Revenue Intelligence. (If you're sniggering away, let me remind you that it was the very same Revenue Intelligence that exposed the Nira Radia scam.) But then, I'm not sure the Revenue Intelligence are even one-hundredth as cool as this movie makes them out to be. I don't think they have posh snipers, state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, an army of hackers, Milind Soman and an informer as hot as Aditi Govitrikar. For that matter, I don't think RAW has a single fellow like Agent Vinod either. As far as I know, these agencies have your standard-issue, slightly pot-bellied, middle-aged, mustachioed Government employees who do their job and come back home at 5 pm and lounge around their verandah in a torn banian and faded veshti and complain about corruption and rogue politicians. None of the hanging-from-a-cable-car-in-their-childhood nonsense.

I met a detective once, at a wedding, and I was aghast. He wasn't one of those, as Lauren Bacall so eloquently put it in The Big Sleep "greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors". Nor was he fast-talking, super-smooth, gun-toting Sam Spade variety. Not even the highly analytical, verbose Byomkesh Bakshi types. He was a Brahmin mama who lived in Mylapore, and when I spoke to him, was scooping paal payasam off his banana leaf and slurping it off his palm greedily. 

But this is a thing about making films about spies or detectives (or even lawyers for that matter). You have two options. You can either stick within existing tropes, and re-imagine or reinvent existing cliches - they are lies anyway, so you make a slightly different lie. Or you can go research the truth, and show them as they are. (No, while making films about lawyers, don't try being realistic. Some incoherent murmuring, an adjournment, and the bench clerk calling out the next case does not make for watchable cinema.) Sriram Raghavan was, clearly, doing the former. But he didn't go the whole hog - he seemed too constrained by prior art. Barring stray sequences, like that unbelievable sequence in that sleazy hotel in East Europe - that heart-stopping four-minute tracking shot gun-battle weaving in and out of corridors and rooms, with a dreamy song playing in the background, the blind pianist, those silent guns and their muted noise - he was stuck, not knowing which way to go.

There is another kind of spy movie. Vinod, a quiet family man, runs a gas agency, called "Vinod Agencies". But that is only a front. When he is not answering innumerable inquiries from various angry customers on when their gas cylinder will arrive, he is a super-agent. But he finishes all his work so subtly and clinically that he's home at 6 pm each evening to play cricket with his children. Something like a Bob Biswas working for the good guys. Now that's a compelling spy movie.

A Personal Goodbye

For the last decade, if Sehwag was dismissed within the first five overs (which was often), I would just turn off the TV. His opening partners weren't always the most attractive - Bangar, Chopra, Das, Jaffer, Gambhir - and one-drop was usually the man who went by the moniker "The Wall", which means that, for hours, one had to endure some splendidly dull Test match batting.

I never liked watching Dravid. Somehow, even with that blemish-free technique, that picturesque backlift, those cuts and arcs, those flowing cover drives, that deadly pull (oh, what a sight that was - straight from shoulder to the ground, and across the ropes in a flash!), his style never appealed to me. It was the minimalist freakishness of Sehwag, the wristy sweetness of Azhar, Laxman and Mark Waugh, and the sheer theatre of Brian Lara in full flight that I loved more. I like effortlessness, I like a certain nonchalance, I like a measure of subtlety. I'm a sucker for drama, I have a fondness for exuberance. I like the man who throws an occasional tantrum, I like the combustible character, I like the batsman who, when the mood strikes him, wants to put every ball beyond the ropes. (I still hate Ricky Ponting, but that's a subject matter of another post.)

Dravid could be effortless on occasion - I remember more of that side of him in the one-dayers - but he revelled in the struggle. Someone remarked, I forget who, that he has never seen a top batsman find the fielder more often that Dravid. That struggle for runs was his home turf, that was his comfort food, that kept him going. That's what made him bat like none in his generation on pitches that were either deadly difficult or downright dangerous.

Maybe it took effort for him to be effortless.

He was never nonchalant - always intense, always pushing the bar, admonishing himself, correcting himself, egging himself on - batting seemed to take a lot out of him. That he could keep up this intensity and this pressure on himself and bat in the same vein, come rain or runs or neither, for days together, was the Dravid Paradox. Seems almost apt that a man of his nature had an over-sweating problem.

Dravid's batting was drama, yes, but not in the same sense as one of Azhar's madcap bouts of sizzling artistry or Lara's knife's edge balancing acts. He was a Tarkovsky, while the others were Scorseses - the drama had no punchlines, it boiled over slowly, often going round and round in circles. He was never exuberant, in person, in batting style, in celebration. I can't remember him throwing a tantrum or combusting. It was not that he wasn't inventive or incapable of strokeplay. There was simply a decidedly old-school measuredness about his batting. He was always deliberate.  If he was ever spontaneous, he hid it very well.


My crassness, my disdain for gentlemanliness, my Joker-like penchant for the theatric, all meant that Dravid never made me watch him. Still, I was glad he was there. I was sure that if I switched on my TV (or logged in to cricinfo) an hour later, he would be there, resisting away, on a reassuring 19 off 45 balls. And, I could sense, that that score would swell, slowly, surely, into another pondering Dravid epic.

I will miss his reassuring presence. 

Vellore Ramabhadran (1929 - 2012)

Sogasuga mridanga taalamu
Jatagurci ninu sokkajeyu dheerudevvado

The Battle of Ganpath Apartments

I have been battling rats for a few days, and various people have advised me variously.
***

 "The good old grandfather rat trap, nothing works like it."
(I live with my grandfather, so I have an actual grandfather rat trap.)

"Mortein Rat Kill."
(Clean and easy. Hmmm.)

"You know that thing.... That sticky sheet with Tom and Jerry cartoons on it?"
(Oh god. No. I don't want to scrape the rat off it afterwards.)

"In a rat trap, you must put a masala vadai."
(Why don't I open a branch of Karpagambal inside the trap for good measure?)

"This Mortein is very tame, da. There's this thing called Shakti Get Out. That can even kill you if you're not careful."
(Shakti Get Out. Oh man. This looks promising. Actually, it looks like a flattened ellurundai. Noxious only.)

"You think it's in a cupboard, you say? Hmmmm. Open the cupboard, find it and hit it repeatedly with a heated iron rod."
(That will make sure it's not cold-blooded anymore.)

"When you use Mortein Rat Kill, make sure you leave one exit open somewhere. Once I came back from some travels and had to scrape off a dead rat from my floor with a spoon."
(Dude, really. Did you have to tell me that?!)

"Rats breed very quickly. A kill in time saves fourteen."
(Oh fuck. I've delayed it for three days now!)


"Saar, I will give you the most important advice. You can put tengai and nei in the rat trap, you can put masala vadai... But the one that will work the best is NV. I had a bhai neighbour in my old house. He told me this. Find some NV neighbour, put the rat trap in the room in which the rat is, leave the NV in it, close all doors and give it ten minutes. That's all. You have your rat."
(NV in this house! Siva, siva. My thatha will catch me in a rat trap next.)

"Dip whatever you have left in the trap in coffee decoction. In our households, we get only Brahmin rats."
(Oh, that's why it was collecting all that string. To make itself a poonal.)

"I have the number of this pest control guy. It'll cost you a couple of grand. But he'll do a clean job."
(For a couple of grand, I'll do a clean job.)

"It's all about strategy, brother. Guerrilla warfare. You are the Mughal emperor. The rat is Shivaji. You have to understand how it strikes, where it strikes, when it strikes. Only then can you beat it. Don't underestimate your foe, like the Mughals did."
(My problem is that I overestimate it, really.)

"Can you claim the damage caused by the rat as a deduction under Chapter IV?"
(Hmmmm. Current repairs? Or Section 37? This is an interesting legal issue.)

"In these hard times, it is crucial that you are brave."
(Hum honge kaamyaab, I say to myself, repeatedly. Hum honge kaamyaab.)

"Your fan stopped working? Dude, this might be a flying mutant rat."
(Or a bat.)

"Once you catch the rat in the trap, don't kill it. Release it in the wild."
(Guindy Snake Park?)

"Killing a caught rat... Hmmmm. That's an art form."
(Yeah. We'll demonstrate it at the Modern Art Gallery.)

"Tie it to a rope, and beat it incessantly."
(The blood will spurt all over, its insides will be outside. That grisly mix of flesh, blood and bone. Tempting.)

"The most painless way to kill a rat once you've caught it is to pour boiling water on it. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak and its gone!"
(It's not really gone, is it? There's a boiled rat carcass right there for you to dispose.)

"Make sure you don't have to scrape it off the floor with a spoon."
(Don't remind me of that image repeatedly, da. Please.)

"The rat might go, but it's soul will live on. Community memory, brother. They will remember your house. They will seek revenge. They will fight to reclaim their land."
(Thank you for those words of encouragement.)

***
Really, thank you all for being so supportive. The Family was exterminated yesterday. Two adults and four kids in all. The house feels like my own again. Now to par-tay.

Train House

"Park your car in that corner, you won't be able to take it inside the street," the old lady said, hauling a mridangam from the back seat onto her shoulders. I parked the car, picked up the other mridangam, the heavier one, and followed her onto the street. With a sprightly gait that belied her age - she was seventy-two - and unmindful of the weight of the mridangam on her shoulder, she turned into the most invisible of gullies that led to this sprawling network of narrower gullies.

"They really should fix that streetlight," she said, pointing to this dark pole. It was eight-thirty in the evening, and it was too dark to even tell if there was supposed to be a light on that pole. Then she realised, "Oh, there's no power!"

She shined a torch from her phone, and took a right turn into an even narrower gap between two buildings only wide enough to admit a small motorcycle - even a malnourished Royal Enfield wouldn't make the cut. The buildings on that street were locked in a tight embrace, covering every inch of space, almost growing into one another, sharing walls, terraces, balconies and doors. Compound walls were forgotten as a concept, breathing space was given a go by, and the view from any window was only another one. Even in near darkness, I could sense that I had stepped into another age. I had to remind myself that I was still in Central Madras.

She stopped at a narrow iron gate leading to a long, tapering, snaking corridor lit by two tired bulbs and lined by three worn out motorcycles. "We have a small generator - I can use one light and one fan when the power is gone," she said. At the end of the corridor was a dull blue door that had surely seen happier times. When she opened that door, a new world unfolded behind it. I didn't realise that there was so much space behind that iron gate. Her torch light revealed more iron gates next to the one we entered, and I wondered if all of them hid worlds like this.

"I used to live closer to the tank, but the owner wanted the house back for his daughter's family," she said, "But this is not too far from the tank. I walk down, sometimes, but I'm growing a little old, no? I am looking for a house closer to the tank, though." I smiled. Civilisations grew around water bodies, I had read in my history classes, but I couldn't believe that proximity to a tank was still a prime consideration for choosing where one lived.

On the ground floor was another blue door, of the same construction as the one outside, and the indistinct hum of a Tamil serial - that mix of pounding background music and thundering melodrama - floated from behind it. I thought I heard a child scream, but that might have also been the serial.

In the corner of the corridor was a closeted flight of stairs that had been standing for half a century at least. I didn't ask her how old the building was, but the stone stairs had a particular kind of construction that suggested that era. "Thank you so much for coming. You see how difficult it would have been for me with two mridangams up these stairs." The stairs were steep, and the mridangam I was carrying was boring into my shoulder. If the walk were a little longer, I might have needed a little break. "You're carrying the big one," she said, "I can't even lift that anymore. It's that heavy. But that naadam..."

We reached a landing that was almost cruelly taken over by a large and incongruous asbestos door. She unlatched it, and led me into what used to be the landing - it had a tap in one corner, a chair and two pairs of slippers on a tiny wooden shelf - now converted into her sit-out. She kept up the chatter, as she fumbled through her handbag for the keys to the inside door.  Her nephew, a well-known mridangam player himself, lived in the next street, she said. The neighbours here kept to themselves, she hardly knew who they were, she complained. "They don't even come and talk, you know," she moaned. She still gave me a fairly detailed biography of the family living in the house watching the Tamil serial.

The inside door said, "Mridangam and vocal classes" in a scribbly Tamil handwriting. No one could see this board when the asbestos door was shut. I wondered if that door was a new addition.

She found the key, finally, and opened the door and led me into a room that was not much wider than the door itself. On one side of the room was a wooden bench with two pillows on it. The other side of the room was a thin shelf that held a bewildering assortment of things. She put her mridangam on the bench, and I followed her. There were two more mridangams in that room, both standing proudly on their thoppis. I walked up to one and struck it. "Tom!" it rang across the house. I was quietly proud that even though I hadn't played one in three years, I could still get a clear tom out of it.

The narrow room ended in another door, beyond which there was a columnar kitchen, about two-thirds the length of the first room. "That's about the entire house," she said, proudly, "The first room is where I sleep and take mridangam classes. This is the kitchen. And there," she said, pointing to another hidden door on the right side of the kitchen, "Is a bathroom." The entire house was built like two coaches of a train with a toilet and bathroom in the vestibule.

A thought struck me - it would be nice to disappear into a house like this, in a gully like this for a few months. It was hidden away from the madness of mainstream Madras, but it was still right there, in the centre of it all.

"Sit down," she said, "I'll make coffee."
I had to go back to a friend's concert, I protested. I'll come back another day, definitely, I promised. "It will take me five minutes to make you the coffee," she insisted.
My friend would be most upset if I missed her concert, I said. Another day, one-hundred percent, I assured her.
"At least have some kali," she said, "Today is a special day for Nataraja. You know that, no?" My grandmother had mentioned something in the morning, and so, guiltlessly, I nodded. She hurriedly put some kali on a steel plate and handed it to me. Suddenly, she said excitedly, "Oh wait. I wanted to show you. I have Anna's photo here on the wall." I looked. It was her much more famous older brother, and it was the photograph most widely released to the press. "A very nice photo. He looks so happy!" She attended almost every one of his concerts in Madras, "I am not able to travel too far these days. You know, Anna plays in places like Madipakkam and Annanagar... Then I can't come. But otherwise, I come, somehow or the other." And she always sat in the front row, and enthusiastically kept taalam for the stage.

Next to her brother's, was her own photograph. She was with our dark-glassed leader in it, receiving an award. "Kalaimamani," she said, as I finished my kali and handed the plate to her, and added "I got that years ago. You can wash your hands in that sink," like the two were a part of the same thought. I looked closely at the photo. She did look younger, and so did our leader. I had heard strange things about that particular award, about when, why and to whom it was given, but she didn't look like she could pull any strings.

There was another photo next to it, a still from a popular Tamil film. I remembered that scene well - a bunch of mamis reinterpreting a popular Hindi song Carnatic style at the behest of a man dressed as a mami. There she was in that still, in the left-hand corner, playing the mridangam. I remember being amazed by the fact that they had actually found a mami to play the mridangam.

I smiled, as I bid her goodnight and walked out the door, but I couldn't help wondering, given her talent, if her life would have been different as a man.

Ideas for a Carnatic Music Bar

I was at Zaras last night with some friends, sitting at the absolute edge of a table of nine people. I didn't hear a word of the conversation at the table. I was distracted by a little thought-breakthrough, an idea that took over my mind last evening, whose clouds will not leave for a while - not a full-blown cyclone, no, but a refreshing thunderstorm. But this post is not about that thought-breakthrough. I just worked it in to make myself sound posh. It is about another idea that intensified when I couldn't hear the conversation over the DJ-din last night.

Music at Zaras, and most other decent pub/bar/lounge-types in Madras, suffers from three issues. First, it's homogenous. It's the same kind of music everywhere. If you don't like that particular kind of music, you're stuck, you have no option (of course, there's Queens Bar in T.Nagar that plays SS Music, but those are exceptions). Second, it is usually too loud, yet not of danceable variety. So, you cannot talk, and you cannot dance. Which means you end up staring at each other with a rather silly expression on your face for most of the evening. Third, the music simply sucks. Last night, at Zaras, they were playing The Offspring. For Lord Kapaleeshwarar's sake, The Offspring! I count buying that cassette with Pretty Fly (For a white guy) in eighth standard amongst the most embarrassing moments of my life. Sheesh, Offspring!


So, I told my friend, a fellow Carnatic musician sitting next to me, "Dude, we should start a bar that plays Thodi raagam." He demonstrated an exaggerated Thodi, and I said, "Yes. Exactly."

Here are some preliminary thoughts:

1. Music: The music will be hardcore Carnatic - you are likely to hear Punnagavarali or Asaveri over  Kurai onrum illai. There will be no songs in Marathi. There will be no Meera Bhajans in badly pronounced Hin-dee. We will play English Note, don't worry.

Of course, lots of Thodi will figure.

The evening will typically begin with some KV Narayanaswamy, and over the course of the night, it will progress through Brindamma's wailing padams, Mali's broken spurts of beauty, and S. Balachander's overwhelming raagamalika taanams. And then, after the waiter asks you for the last order and makes the lights a little brighter, and you're in that phase when you get up and realise you're drunker than you thought you were, we wind-down with MD Ramanathan's baritone that seems to emanate from the centre of the earth. It will give you a sense of balance and purpose.

There will be regular occasions, like November Nadaswaram Nights (ideally live, open-air, late night), February Fusion Week (we have to attract youngsters also), Mridangam Mondays (featuring extended tani avartanams where you will get free drinks for putting correct taalam), Tambura Tuesdays (Where you drink to the drone that somehow signifies the omkara, that primordial sound that contains a  universe. Yes, yes. We have philosophical pretensions also.), Flute Fridays (cocktails will be served in a large flute the size of the table - you can put straws in each hole and drink), Violin Wednesdays (where if you tune a dummy violin correctly, you get extra sundal), and the occasional Seshagopalan Saturday or Sanjay Sunday. Cheesy things like playing music by musicians called Krishna or Krishnan or Krishnamurthy on Christmas will be encouraged. Occasionally, like the Music Academy, the bar will feature a Hindustani night (and the mama who comes there every week will identify every raga as Mishra-Maand) or a Ghazal night (which will be popular amongst those mamis who find Hariharan cute and his voice mellifluous, and amongst posh Sowcarpet residents and the Annanagar North Indians.)

For the sake of inclusiveness, themes like "Raga-based songs of Maestro Ilayaraaja" and "Golden Melodies of AR Rahman" will appear once a year.

The sound system will be uniformly bad, the recording quality worse.

2. Decor: The walls will be plastered with portraits of "doyens" of "yesteryears" who rendered "yeoman service" to Carnatic music, with appropriate flower garlands, incense sticks and a solitary, small, red zero-watt bulb. Drinks will be served in steel tumblers with davaras. Plates will look like kanjiras, spoons like morsings, straws like flutes (with fake holes, of course), pitchers like ghatams. Just so that the electronic tambura doesn't feel left out, one will be left on each table for no reason. You can irritate everyone at your table by constantly changing sruti. If they tell you off, tell them you're playing jazz.

3. Decorum: Decorum without rum is mere deco. Therefore, the worse you behave, the better the ambience is. You will be expected to let out an occasional "Mtch-mtch," or a "Tut-tut-tut-tut..." or a "Bhale" or a "Sabhaas". You are expected to noisily put taalam. You are expected to bring along a small raga book for ready reference.

If you wear shoes, you will be asked to remove them at the entrance (take that, Zaras!), if you wear a veshti, you will get extra ribbon pakoda, if your shirt is un-ironed and nondescript, you will get the title of Rasikar Vendhar along with some coconuts, bananas, a dilapidated orange, two suspect apples, a few betel leaves of no use to man or beast, two packets of pak, a shimmering ponnaadai that no human being can publicly wear, a citation and a purse of Rs. 101.

Men and women will be made to sit in separate enclosures (oh wait, they already do this at Bikes and Barrels).  Then we won't do this, we don't want to copy. Like Kamal Hassan, we will be different.

4. Food and Beverage: While all the regular items will make an appearance, there will be some raga-based cocktails. The Gandharam Gargle is a tribute to Thodi's ga - its taste will be ambiguous yet heavy, and it will taste differently when drunk from different parts of the glass. A vodka-and-red-bull-based cocktail is planned for Kadanakuthoohalam's jumpiness. Prussian Blue, based on Neelambari's lullaby will lull you into comforting slumber. Piping hot filter coffee with a dash of brandy will be available.

As a tribute to the local, Vorion 6000 beer will be given prime importance.

Keera vadai, samosa, ribbon pakoda etc. will form the side eats. Special sundal during navaratri. Pongal and chakkarapongal during pongal. Adirasam, murukku and mixture from Suswaad, T. Nagar, throughout the year.

5. Karaoke Night: Once a fortnight, there will be a Carnatic karaoke with live mridangam and violin. They will play the raga and song of your choice, which you will choose from an unmemorable yellow and pink printed file, to which you will be required to do elaborate neraval and swaram. Sometimes, there will be a Royal Challenger RTP Challenge where each table nominates one person, and the pallavi goes around the bar in sequence. Tables will be eliminated if they muff up their round. The eduppus and the ragams get tougher as each round progresses.


More ideas are welcome. This is a work-in-progress.
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(I wish to acknowledge the occasional inebriated inputs from one Shri. Aditya Prakash (Los Angeles).)