Little India - Singapore

Singapore as such is one of the lovliest places to live. Be it the facilities, connectivity to the outside world, safety, warmth of the people, you can keep adding adjectives to describe the city. However, for people from India, there is one thing which makes it even more special - Its a place called the "Little India" in Singapore. Being away from Chennai, my home town for long periods of time, any opportunity that provides an alternative to the craving of visiting Chennai is welcome. Having said that, this is one place which makes me feel at home, gives a feel like being in Chennai. To analogise, the ambience here is just like the one of T.Nagar and Mylapore in Chennai.

Given the fact, about 15% of the Singapore populace constitutes  Tamilians. You get a much more feel that you are in Chennai when you land here. There are shops that sell just about anything that you can get in India. There is even a Nalli Silks on Buffalo Road just in case you wanted to grace any occasion with a new silk saree or a silk dhoti. Apart from these shops, there are more than 20 restaurants in this stretch of Serangoon Road that serves authentic Indian food. These restaurants cater to the taste buds of people from regions across India. Right from Swaad that serves Gujarathi specialities to Komala Vilas serving mouth watering south indian food to MTR serving Udipi style dishes, there is no dearth of restaurants to satisfy your appetite depending on your day. You have the Veeralakiamman Temple in the centre of Little India that I frequent. You also have the Srinivasa Perumal Temple and Vadapathira Amman at the end of the little India stretch along with a Shirdi Baba Mandir and Raghavendra mutt. Another important thing to relish about this place is its keenness to embrace the festive fervour, whether its Deepavali or Pongal. The whole stretch is decorated beautifully with lights and its a spectacle to watch and walk this stretch during night time. Last but not the least, the ever awake Mustafa is located here which makes this place to always bustle with activity. True to its name, Its does not disappoint you. Any Indian Item - you name it & you get it in this place.

Komala Vilas Singapore

As a hardcore Chennaite, I am used to devouring rice for all three meals a day from breakfast to dinner, be it in the form of Idli, Dosa, Sambar or curd rice. I don't get  a wholesome feel unless the morsel of food spreads throughout the mouth leaving the taste and flavour even long after you have finished your meal. This can only be got with the polymorphs of rice mixed with south Indian specialities like Sambar or Rasam. For the uninitiated, Sambar and Rasam are basically stews that are meant to be mixed and consumed with cooked rice called Sadam in Tamil. Especially with Sambar, there are innumerable versions like Onion Sambar, Drumstick and Radish Sambar, each one transcending the consumer to a different level.  Having said this, I have tried eating in almost all the Indian restaurants in Singapore, right from Annalakshmi to the moderate Mani Iyer mess on Hindoo Road in Little India. With ~15% of the population of Singapore belonging to the tamil diaspora, there is no dearth of South Indian food and restaurants. You can find them all over the Island. But of the lot I have tried here, the Komala Vilas restaurant in Serangoon Road stands out among all.

They have an awesome spread on the menu from Naan and Aloo Palak to the piping hot sambar Idli. The taste is amazing. My favourite here has always been the rice meal here. They have a different menu each day. With a variety of 3 vegetables, along with Sambar, Thuvayal, Vathal Kuzhambu, Rasam and Kheer, etc., Its very much a likeable option for me whenever I visit Komalas.  The best part about this restaurant is the quality of food which remains consistent whether you go at 8 AM in the morning or at 10 PM in the evening just before they close. The reason that the restaurant is in Little India makes it a much more enticing reason to visit this restaurant on all weekends. 

Universal Studios

I had been to Universal Studios when I live in Los Angeles for a few months, years ago. So, I did not bother to visit it so far in Singapore where it is one of the major tourist attractions. But this time, when my wife and daughter were here to spend their summer vacation, We had taken a season pass which allows multiple entries into the studios for a period of 6 months. The studios in Singapore is not as big as its US counterpart. May be, Half the size or even less. The studio is located in the popular Sentosa Islands which you can get into by alighting at the harbor front MRT.

Though I am not a big buff of theme parks and entertainment shows. I have to admit that a sense of fun filled excitement surrounds you once you enter the studios. People from multiple countries, ear ripping music, spectacular shows, spine chilling rides, etc. Mummy & Transformer are the popular rides in the studios though there are many others within the park. My daughter quickly became an ardent fan of Mummy in which they take us in a high speed roller coaster that travels inside a dark tunnel with the temperature brought down by a few degrees. All this result in a super duper, butterflies in the stomach experience which unconsciously makes you ask for more. Transformer is again a marvelous ride that taken you into the a world of virtual reality where your car is being attacked by aliens. This is not too painful for the neck and shoulders and is an experience not to be missed. There are other shows like the shriek and the water world.  The parade at 5 PM is a spectacle to watch with characters from popular movies going on a procession inside the studios. We have visited the studios 3 times till now and plan to visit it a couple more times before our passes expire.

Joyful Singapore

It has been a while since i wrote after i moved to Singapore 6 months ago. I had relocated to Singapore and have settled down quite smoothly than i had expected. I live in Tampines that quite close to my office in Changi Business park. It takes about half and hour if I take the MRT or 10 minutes if I take a cab. Needless to say Its a comfortable place to live. I have been to Singapore a couple of times before. But this is the first time I am here for long term and am able to feel the city. Its a small country and the facilities on par with what you get in the US. The city is well connected by train & bus all over. I presume its the cleanest city and a very safe city too, which was one of reasons i prefer this place than any other. But, the major attraction is its just a 4 hour flight from here to Chennai and I dont need to plan 6 months in advance for my travel. Food is another convenience here for south Indian vegetarians like me with restaurants like Saravana Bhavan and Ananda Bhavan having their branches all over the city.I plan to be here for a while and plan to bring my family in the near future. Nevertheless, the thought of Namma chennai  is always there and I visited Chennai once for a short vacation. I will write more about my life here in the forthcoming posts.

Traffic woes

I had been to Ritchie street today afternoon to get a hardware part fixed in my laptop. The fix took only about fifteen minutes, but the commute time was more than 3 hours to reach Ritchie street and come back home. Roads are blocked and vehicles diverted within the city (Chennai) for the metro rail construction. Roads with 4 lanes are reduced to just a passage that's big enough only for a single vehicle to pass. While i drove back, i thought that the mount road will be lane of vehicular chaos and took the beach road. I then understood that it was an experience of jumping onto the stove from the Pan. Vehicles were moving at a snail's pace with lot of vehicles coming in a cool way in the opposite direction. I now understand the reason for the frequent accidents on the beach road with buses and cars ramming vehicles coming in the opposite direction. I should thank Ilayaraja for helping me to keep my cool through out those 2 hours of nerve wrecking traffic chaos. Chennai seems to be in a transformation phase right now with the construction of the pillars and tracks for the metro rail. The plan seems to cover the busiest stretches of the city. I presume the city's transportation system will get a major face lift once the metro rail becomes  operational. Phase 1 may get completed by the end of 2013. The hope is that the car & two wheeler users will reduce their road usage with the advent of the metro rail system. Wherever available, electric trains seem to be the quickest means of transportation within the city. I am very hopeful that most of the vehicle users would prefer using this new means of transport instead of getting tormented by the traffic chaos to save a couple of minutes. So, the only option right now is to keep our patience intact while traversing through the main roads of the city and wait for the metro dawn.

Diwali Again

This year's Diwali is around the corner. The city is as usual ready to embrace  the festival of lights with a delightful fervor. I already see placards outside popular sweet stalls stating that they are ready to take bulk orders for sweets. When i was young(in school), buying sweets from a stall was not very common and there were not so many sweets shops around as they exist today. Unlike other festivals, sweets used to be made in large quantities at least 2 weeks before the festival. I came home everyday with my tongue trickling with droplets of saliva and taste buds ready to devour the variety of sweets that were made at home. Things changed a bit afterwards. Distributing sweets to employees in offices especially for Diwali became a practice  Both my parents were employed and, we waited for the sweet boxes they would bring home. We sometimes snatched those boxes from our parents while on the way, even before they could reach home. We relished them more as they would have exotic varieties of sweets than what my mother knew to make at home. For crackers, my father's office had a cooperative society that sold crackers at a price slightly lesser than the market prices. I would keep inquiring my father about the date on which the stalls would open lest i miss anything on my list as the crackers used to get sold out in those cooperative stalls very quickly. Buying crackers used to be done with so much fanfare at that time. We discussed in our friends circle as to when each of us will be buying crackers. At times, i used to take friends for buying crackers. What an happiness that was. Even crores of rupees would not get us back those days or the feeling. The energy and the spirit have dwindled down over the years. We don't celebrate now. But the fervor seems to be less. Today, I see even kids refraining from lighting crackers now as they are told by their teachers that child labor is involved. But i am pretty sure that these kids miss the excitement and amusement that we expected and enjoyed every moment on that day. Most of the time, Ignorance is Bliss.
 

Power of Prayer

"Prayer is the last resort and the ultimate resource left to  man where the human intellect fails."
- Mahasaya, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's disciple.
I have often thought about this powerful statement that i read from the book "A Search in Secret India" by the western Spiritual explorer Paul Brunton. When the whole world is aligned with reason and intellect, Is it worthwhile to put effort  on something that  purely depends on faith. How many of us have felt or at least agree with the fact that Prayer is a force that helps us to subconsciously concentrate only on things that are positive. Though i have heard and read a lot about self realization or emancipation, i have not really had such moments in life till now. But, i have a very strong belief that prayer can help you generate positive thoughts and in the long run create a mindset thats devoid of negative thoughts. It also aids in being calm while under pressure and can help you weigh merits and demerits of a situation and take an informed decision. The western philosophy of Auto Suggestion seems to work in a similar manner. Any thought positive or negative is a wave that spreads around you and amasses more of its kind from the surrounding universe until it becomes a tsunami. This eventually has an effect on how you react or respond to people or situations. I am sure that everyone prays for something constructive. The saying that Well begun is half done is grounded to the fact that the person has the right mindset in order to achieve what he wants to. I would say that this is also a kind of a prayer that is done subconsciously without even the individual realizing it. How do i cultivate the habit of praying often? Going to temples often can be a very good starting point. Temples are places where most of us tend to keep our egos out and try to remain our true self. Thats a place where we can start practicing the art of praying or auto suggetion. Once you get habituated to praying regularly, you will realize that you feel calm and your days are better than what you expected. Your talking will get reduced and you will start to judge content and not people. You will also realize that there is always a force that is ready to help you realize your positive goals. With our life span being very short, why do we need to litter our mind with anything negative. I believe it takes only practice to keep our mind bubbling with possitive thoughts all the time and prayer is the easiest way to achieve it.