Of Coffee Houses and Pho Gà

Today is the kind of day I like - slow, lazy, cool, devoid of traffic, a holiday in the middle of the week! Being the concluding 10th day of the Dasara festival, Vijayadashami has kept most Bangaloreans at home. So Faz and I have started the day with breakfast at India Coffee House, scrambled eggs on toast, mutton cutlets, fresh lime juice and ICH signature dosas, before he heads off to work and I stay back to nurse my book and one leisurely cup of coffee after the other...completely my kind of day!

Looking out the picture window in the front, at the world going by, I realize I haven't gotten around to writing about my recent trip to Vietnam, though I have been waxing eloquent about it to everyone I meet. So here goes!

While it was fairly short (3 & a half days only) and confined to the city, my visit left me wanting more. Contrary to my perceptions, that a war-ravaged country in the middle of the Pacific couldn't have resolved to much semblance of normalcy, Ho Chi Minh City was a surprise. For one, the weather was quite comfortable, barely balmy and often cool, at the height of what was supposed to be the worst season. For my heat-averse self, this was a complete boon! The city itself, laid out in old French lines, with what looked like Bangalore and San Francisco's China Town mixed in, was clean and extremely orderly.

Wide roads and boulevards, well-regulated traffic, clean streets and sidewalks. And a mass of bike traffic....bikes, bikes everywhere...small ones, fast ones, old ones, new ones...every Vietnamese seemed to be zipping along on a bike, wearing signature capri pants and a jockey helmet. The few other vehicles seen were either extremely high-end, newer model cars or cyclos (trishaws - these are like the old cycle-rickshaws, only with the cycle part at the back, and single seating at the front). The rich-poor divide seemed very clear cut, at least on the roads. Public transportation meant either a cab, a bike-taxi or the cyclo. The latter two being the most common.

I preferred to walk, though. The best way, in my opinion, to see any city, to experience it, is to foot soldier!

So, walk I did, from the hotel to the local markets, to the Pho joints where I downed bowls of Pho Gà (rice noodles in clear soup with chicken, served with chopped red peppers, sprouts, onions, chilly sauce and bean sauce), to the saloon where I head-banged to some amazing Rock music belted out by a surprisingly talented Filipino band with an out-of-this-world sound. Walk I did, except when I took a cyclo on a short tour of the city, before heading out to dinner with the team.

Oh right, I was in Ho Chi Minh on work, and all my jaunts about the city were interspersed with conferences and meetings. None of which stopped me from taking these side trips. And enjoying some of the best fruit I have ever tasted...watermelons, tangerines, oranges, dragonfruit....nectar on my tongue! When I got tired of fruit and Pho Gà, which I indulged in for every alternate meal, I went hunting and discovered a little restaurant called 'Spice' that served up some of the best Thai food outside of Thailand. Better than some of the best Thai food in Thailand, in fact!

Of course, my picks, overall on this trip, were limited since I am allergic to anything that swims (Lord help me if chickens ever start hanging by the pool!), and I don't eat anything that oinks. And the Vietnamese lace their food with prodigious amounts of fish sauce and pork products, apart from a host of other things I tried not to recognize. Asking for unadulterated Chicken, however, normally afforded me a good meal. That and tucking into delicacies like beef satay, slow-braised veal in tamarind sauce served with with green peppercorn, spring onions with herbs and vinegar, and lamb chops. All this followed by desserts like sticky mango rice or almond banana cake with hazelnut ice cream and nougat or fresh cut fruits served on ice. My palate was tickled no end!

For a short trip, I walked my legs off, tried almost every kind of food available (except from the things with mandibles or tentacles!), and satisfied the bargain shopper in me (clothes, lacquer ware, coffee, nuts, rice paper paintings...!). I would love to make another trip back, sometime soon, and spend a few days both tramping through the cities and exploring the surrounding countryside. Saigon, here I come!

Airport Vs. Airport.

I had a chance to travel to Hyderabad, last week, on one of my usual morning-evening trips. After experiencing the new Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad, and naturally comparing it to the Bengaluru International Airport at Devanahalli, all I can say is that the BIAL is simply brilliant.

A brilliant waste of time, money, effort and intention.

This is not to say that Shamshabad is perfect or extremely well-planned. It is to say that BIAL is so much worse as to fall right off the bottom of the scale.

Paradise Lost....and Found?

Faz and I spent this past weekend zipping from one part of the city to another, working our way through the innumerous To-Do lists we had. And as we tripped over uneven pavements, darted through traffic, got stuck in slow-moving jams, jumped signals (inadvertently not intentionally!), got jugged for illegal parking and generally got honked at by motorists who really should have known better, I couldn't help but feel like we almost found the Bangalore we had lost. Almost, but not quite.

Ever since Bangalore arrived (with a bang!), exploding onto national and international awareness as the IT Capital of India, my personal opinion has been that the city has gone to the dogs. Oh, wait, correct that....even the dogs probably don't want anything to do with it. And the prime culprits have been the unimaginable growth in the city's populace (courtesy massive influx from here, there and the back of beyond), corresponding exponential increase in pollution and decrease in the green spaces that were Bangalore's pride, abysmal lack of infrastructure or public facilities and sky-rocketing costs of living (also known as barely-hanging-on-by-your-fingernails).

No more peaceful residential layouts, what with every other building being turned into a commercial "enterprise" of some sort or the other ; no more blissful Bangalore weather, though it is still better here than in most cities in India ; no more after-work drives down to City Center (read MGs, Brigades, St.Marks, Comm Street and thereabouts) for a saunter and bandi-eating ; no more veggie shopping at Russel Market ; no more lazy weekend mornings at Koshy's, watching the world go by ; no more quiet reading at British Library followed by aimless drives through random areas; no more night shows in town in the middle of the work week ; no more mid-week concerts at Chowdiah Hall ; no more Vasantahabba ; no more sense of pride in Namma Bengaluru.

Life has, over the past 6 years, metamorphosed into something unrecognizable for an old Bangalorean (even for a relatively new Bangalorean!), and the infinite traffic snarls, noise, crowds, increasing road-rage, lack of courtesy, common-sense and plain civic sense makes this something to run from. And over the past 6 years, we have both forgotten why we came here in the first place.

However, for a few moments this weekend, as we walked hand-in-hand through the bustle of Avenue Road and BVK Iyengar Road, met with old-timers at stores that have been doing business for ever and a day, joked with sales boys and girls in the Marthahalli Factory outlets, haggled with fruit sellers on bicycles, ate pani-puri at roadside corners, and shoveled scrambled-eggs-on-toast with cold coffee at India Coffee House, we saw glimmers of the place Bangalore had been and of Life as we had known it.

Of a Life that had time for everyone, and everything, where a smile and a bit of a chat with a nameless stranger had no strings attached, where slow satisfaction carried more importance than instant gratification.