Bangalore Metblogs » bang_shom

Naughty Nutty

bang_shom — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 05:46:31 +0000

What’s that Icecream.

Available at Friends, BTM Layout and Koramangala. Rendezvous, Koramangala. And I am sure a lot of other places in Bangalore too. Corner House? Will check at follow up.

Ingredients Dollops of vanilla icecream in a cup. A lot of cashewnuts thrown on top. A smallish cube of cake over it. Thick honey to top it up.

Price INR 62.00 as of Saturday, July 08, 2006.

Comments Heavenly. Highly recommended.

Jukebox

bang_shom — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:50:02 +0000

I quite liked Jukebox, this quaint little restaurant on 7th Block, Koramangala. Had spent countless evenings devouring the delicious food or wincing at the flat beer there. I loved the old-world ambiance, the staunch refusal to change with the times, the posters of BB King and Otis Redding on the wall, Vinyl covers of Sinatra and Skeeter Davis, of a much younger (and not yet muscled up) Madonna, and even that cranky old AC. You didn’t go to Jukebox to have a good time, you went there to take it easy.

I still like Jukebox infact. But last Saturday, visiting Jukebox after nearly two months, I felt a little sad. The sepia-toned wall has given way to an antiseptic white, the decidedly old-world heavy wooden door has been replaced by a sleek glass barricade, and the false ceiling is not there anymore.

On inquiring about this sea change to Farrokh, the owner, and on expressing to him my mild displeasure at this transformation, he told me that they have renovated the place only last Friday, the 16-year old place needed an overhaul, all said. So came in the new red-and-black chequered chairs, came in the glass door, and off went the false ceiling.

But what the hell, the food is still good (the beer is still weak though). I will still keep coming down there to while away the weekday evenings with friends. But I’ll miss the old brown place I knew so well.

Pele in Gautampura?

bang_shom — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:14:01 +0000

The June 18, 2006 volume of The Week reports that

… the football crazy residents of Gautampura, (in Bangalore) have installed a statue of Pele, next to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s, in the local park.

Could not find the article on the net. The print version of the article has a photograph alongwith.

Bangalore University splits boys, girls

bang_shom — Fri, 19 May 2006 08:10:05 +0000

A LoC (line of control) has been drawn at the Bangalore University. A brutal attack on a group of women students in the English department on May 2, has prompted its Syndicate, the highest decision-making body, to pass a resolution: not to let boys and girls sit together during classes!

–TOI: Bangalore, 18th May 2006

Not the first thing you would expect to see on your morning newspaper. Raises too many questions, and well, TOI wasn’t supposed to do that anyway, or were they? Read the full article here.

I was having this conversation yesterday evening with my sister (who studies in a medical college in Kolkata) on a somewhat similar topic. She was telling me that this classmate of hers who was sitting beside her was leaning across such that it was a little uncomfortable for her. So she had asked him (rather politely at first) to straighten up. The guy had made a face, and then did straighten up. In about 15 minutes, though, he was back to the old posture, literally falling on to her. My sister, then, rather casually mentioned to him that if he does not straighten up in the next 5 seconds, “even though you are a classmate, I would not care about your career, your future etc, and will go and complain to the director”. The guy had straightened up thereafter.

I had asked my sister, is it a common malady in colleges? Does it happen often? And do other girls speak up like she did? In her usual irreverent tone, she said that yes, there are a few instances where it happens; yes, if you tell them off, the guys stop; but no, not everyone speaks up; “It is the mild ones, the shy ones who tend to bear the brunt”, she said.

That took me back to the days at my old Engineering college, here in Bangalore. In the first few days of class, there were a boys’ wing and a girls’ wing. And the middle wing had a few girls in the first two seats, an empty row or two in the middle, and two rows of sleepy backbench guys followed. Most of us were from all boys’ or all girls’ schools, and were not very comfortable communicating with the other sex.

As time passed, that level of discomfort reduced and it was common for guys and girls to share seats. Now I’m sure none of the girls in our class were trying to be progressive (as Mr. Narahari claims in the newspaper column), but were just being themselves. I doubt if they were really conscious of sitting beside guys, they were just sitting beside another classmate. So, there were some who sat with basically anybody, be them boys or girls. There were some who fell in love, and sat only with each other. And there were some girls, and some guys, who continued to sit with other girls, or other guys, the level of discomfort had not quite reduced for them. All in all, it was a normal class.

My sister’s words made me wonder, did similar things happen in our college too? Were there guys in our college too, who were told to sit straight by girls? And even if there are incidents as violent as the one in the BU English department, does that justify putting a full-stop to normal, natural behaviour between guys and girls?

I decided to call up my sister. What could be her take to this? The following is a gist of what the caustic, vocal kid sister of mine came up with.

That’s just irrational. What is this Syndicate trying to do? Are they trying to segregate the world into two parts, one belonging to men and the other to women? I studied in an all-girls school, you studied in an all-boys school, it was initially a little uncomfortable for me to interact normally with people of the other gender in college, I’m sure it must have been for you too… but after that we adjusted. Some adjusted better. Some adjusted worse. But that’s fine, isn’t it?
By driving this kind of a wedge between normal interactions, will this Syndicate not ensure that these guys who pass out of colleges with these restrictions in place,will never be able to look at women as equals, and by equal I mean no better and no worse, no more special and no less? And neither will the girls. Don’t you see that these guys and girls will meet other people in the workplace for the matter and there will be no separate seats for guys and girls there? And this syndicate member of yours, is he himself really convinced that men and women should have equal rights, in the first place?
And you remember the incident I was talking to you about, yesterday? Tell me, what would any woman patient prefer? A doctor who is perverted, repressed and has never learnt to see women as humans; or a doctor who had been lecherous as a young’un but has been made to realise that he has to draw the line at some stage?

And well, I don’t think I have much to add to this. I’ll just add this little caveat.

Separate seats is not the solution. Separate seats is the same as the Jews having to wear the mark of their religion in Nazi Germany. That is separatist, and college is supposed to be anything but separatist.

Is it unnatural to be sexually attracted by a female classmate? Of course not. What differentiates a human from an animal in this case is in the human’s ability to keep a control to that feeling, because expression of that feeling might be tantamount to violating the other person’s personal space.

And the solution is in creating proper controls such that a) female students are made to feel comfortable and confident that their complaints, if any, will be addressed in the correct way; and b) Matters such as the one on the 2nd of May are never allowed to escalate to such levels. And that is the responsibility of the college authority.

And incidents like the one on the 2nd of May will, IMHO, not be stopped with something as trivial as making boys and girls sit on separate seats.

KQA Mahaquizzer 2006

bang_shom — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:29:19 +0000

This is for all you quizzing enthusiasts over there. The Karnataka Quiz Association (KQA), one of the city institutions all Bangaloreans should be proud of, will hold the second edition of Mahaquizzer, the annual solo quiz contest, in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and New Delhi on Sunday, the 21st of May, 2006.

The person with the top score across the cities will hold the title of Mahaquizzer for this year. The winner will also receive the Wing Commander Mulky Memorial Trophy for Quizzing Excellence from Wing Commander Mulky’s family in June at the time of the KQA Anniversary.

Visit the KQA blog for further details.

The first edition of the KQA MahaQuizzer was conducted on June 12, 2005 at Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum and Mumbai. 335 quizzers participated in it and the winner was Anustup Datta from Bangalore.

And if you would want to try out the questions from KQA Mahaquizzer 1, here’s where you will find them.

So will a Bangalorean win the holy grail of quizzing in the country again this time? Let’s wait and watch…

Bannerghatta Road

bang_shom — Sat, 13 May 2006 07:19:29 +0000

Some of you would remember a story on NDTV, sometime during the last few months of 2005, about the worst roads in India. You would remember that our own Bannerghatta Road was ranked the worst among them all, in that programme.

Times changed, and so did Bannerghatta Road. And so much so that by March of 2006, a drive from Shoppers’ Stop down to the National Park was a pleasure. The much maligned Bannerghatta Road was back to where it belongs, at the top of the right heap…

And NOW is its biggest test. What do you think, readers? Will dear ol’ Bannerghatta Road survive the onslaught of the monsoon? Civil Engineers, what do you say? I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed, and praying very hard indeed…