Back Home

I am back home now. Landed in Chennai yesterday morning after a long & tiring flight. No flight transports you back from America to India in less than 24 hours, atleast 22. Its a sea of difference between the streets of Manhattan to the streets of Chennai. But Namma Chennai is as sweet as ever with a sense of belongingness to the city prevailing in me all over. Slowly catching up with the news & events here in India and Chennai. The political heat is on with BJP stalling the parliment proceeding quoting the allotment of coal mines to private parties in an arbitrary manner. On the better side, The weather in Chennai seems to be getting better. The heat during the day seems to have simmered down a bit with a few spells having brought down the always soaring 35+ deg temperature.  I went to Pazhamudhir Solai to get vegetables today. Prices of vegetables seem to be under control. I have plans to take my daughter out sometime this week- She might not have been taken out last 2 months during my absence here except for her school and other classes. But she has her exams this week and I need to plan. Nevertheless, I have to go to office in a day & start getting engaged with my next assignment. But on the whole, i am happy to be back home.

Saravana Bhavan, New York

In continuation of my previous post on Saravana Bhavan dinner yesterday, i should admit that the taste was authentic south Indian and it just transported me to Chennai for those 30 minutes that it took to finish my dinner. It was a typical Saravana's style dinner with items such as Sambar, Rasam, Kootu, Vatha Kuzhambu, Appalam, Payasam and rice. It was just about 8:30 PM when i opened the pack with lot of fondness, i realized that the quantity of rice was less. Especially for a south Indian like me whose staple diet is Rice in different forms for BreakFast, Lunch and Dinner, the quantity i felt was just peanuts. Also, the rice had become cold and hardened. So, i made rice myself and consumed all the items given with a reasonably large quantity of rice. The taste of the items was just the same as what you would expect in any of the Saravana restaurants back in Chennai. In Chennai, they have a centralised kitched from where most of the items (At least for a meal) would get transported from. I was wondering as to how these guys manage to bring their authentic Saravana taste to all the places they go, be it Singapore or New York. Myself and my daughter have always been a fan of Saravana. My daughter will not agree for a lunch or dinner in any of the hotels other than the HSB, Like wise, most of my cousins have tuned their taste buds to the taste of the HSB Masala Dosa and Sambar. When i called my cousin today to tell him about my tryst with the HSB in New York, he asked me to call later. The reason was that he was in Saravana Bhavan having a Masala Dosa in  and wanted to enjoy the Savor of the moment. Chennai or New York, that's the magic of HSB. I am sure you would agree.

Saravana Bhavan, New York

I have been trying out different restaurants in the last couple of weeks, here in New York. But none could satisfy the taste buds of a person who has been eating authentic south Indian food at Home and  restaurants like Saravana Bhavan   and Annalakshmi, back in Chennai. So today, i was determined to have my dinner in Saravana Bhavan. I had called my friend yesterday and had asked him the way to one of my favorite restaurants, the HSB. I was also longing for a good Filter Coffee so much last couple of weeks which was a granted back home. The Saravana's or HSB for short is located at the begining of the 28th Street in the Lexington Avenue, New York. I have got used to the concept of Avenues and Streets of Manhattan due to my commute to the Park Avenue office every day. But otherwise too, there should not be a problem finding a spot in New York with a bit of a direction sense, for the reason that Manhattan is very neatly divided into Avenues and Streets. If you know the Number, Street and Avenue, you can reach your destination without much help from others. I set out for my dinner errand at about 5 PM and headed straight to the 33rd street. From there, it was about a 20 minute walk to the HSB. The ambience was great with tamil songs being played to give a feel that you are in a hotel which is a hallmark in Chennai, though the place right now was New York. The place was clean and well organized except that the waiters could have been a bit more friendly rather than being mechanical, according to my judgement. I ordered a coffee as soon as i entered and could not have my dinner there as it was just quarter to six which is too early for my dinner. So, i ordered a takeway of a South Indian Meal to be consumed at home later. I then took a walk back to the subway station on Lexington to head back to my Hotel. I will post again about the taste of the food items. I plan to go there whenever possible, but will take a bit of time and effort. But anyway, Saravana Bhavan is a name thats worth the money and effort whether its Chennai or New York.

New York Times

I am once again (and again) in the US, this time in New York to work for a banking giant. But this seems to be an entirely different experience, No cars to travel, lot of walking on the roads and commuting by the Path and the subway. Its has been an tiring but exciting 3 weeks till now. New York is outright pacy and different than the other cities i have seen in the US. I stay in a place called Journal Square in Jersey City and travel to Mid Town Manhattan, where my office is. The commute takes about an hour and i change 3 trains to reach my office. Its Path which carries me from Journal Square to the 33rd Street. From there, i take the N or the R subway uptown trains headed for Queens to get down at Times Square. From Times Square, there are shuttles every minute to the Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. From the Grand Central Terminal, its a  five minute walk to the Lexington Avenue to reach my office in the Park Avenue. The significance of this journey i described is that the most visited tourist locations of the world are on my way. The empire state building is in the 34th street and sometimes in the evening back home from office, i take a walk back to 33rd street from my office only to see this engineering marvel. Grand Central is again a spot that you cannot miss for its architectural beauty. Thousands of people throng New York to see the places that i just mentioned, but it has turned out to be a visit to these place everyday for me. Its turning out to be a new and enriching experience for me here. Will keep you posted more on my life here as i experience.

To Know or Not

Have you ever given a thought about the dwindling count of sparrows in your neighborhood? or to be more relavent, what constitutes the poverty line, leave alone knowing the fact as to what percentage of our population  live below the poverty line. Not many of us would have bothered about all of these. Most of us are so much lost in the chores of our meaningless day to day life that we miss the importance of knowing some of the basic facts around us. There is so much stuff that we take for granted as it does not impact our daily livelihood ie. money making. I feel that it requires some amount of passion to want to know about the things around us which indirectly impact us. Take your son's or daughter's school books and you would get to know how much ignorant you are in basic science & history and more importantly in the day to day affairs. Most of us don't mind spending hours and hours watching mindless movies or unimportant cricket matches. The other day, it was a shock for me to see a television show where some youth were asked as to who the father of our nation is and many did not know. May be the question was not relevant to them as it was not connected to Cinema or Cricket. The habit of reading and the inquisitiveness to know the fundamentals seems to be lacking with the youth these days. Moreover, a majority of  the children nowadays seem to be more obsessed with online games and television shows than reading a good book on history or current affairs. Reading is one thing which always has the power to keep you contemporary apart from the pleasure it gives you in getting to know things. It has to be encouraged among kids in schools even from a little age of 6 or 7 when they are taught to read small sentences.

3D Movie John Carter

I am not a big movie buff myself. At times, I watch them to kill time. However in recent times, I have become a regular to Satyam and Inox . My daughter is a 3D movie buff and we have seen most for most of the 3D movies that were released over the last one year. Gulliver's Travel, Cars, Kungfu Panda are some of the worthy ones to mention. Our last tryst was with John Carter in Satyam, a sci-fi movie that really could not keep our attention intact throughout. An army officer gets transported to the planet Mars, by virtue of possessing a magical talisman. The rest of the story goes on in Mars with battles between martian king(dom)s to reign supremacy in the planet. Its hard core science fiction and a bit difficult to follow the story line, if you haven’t read the plot in the wiki before you go to watch the movie. Nevertheless, the sets of the movie are spectacular with huge fortresses, their vehicles for transport catching the eyes.  The art director definitely needs a mention for his imagination of the people(creatures) that inhabit Mars. There is also a tinge of comedy when the hero is thrown up in the air because of the low gravitational forces, whenever he tries to walk. The movie will be an overall a fun filled outing for kids except for the story line that will be slightly hard to follow.

Vehicle For Communication

In the last couple of weeks, there had been news articles of two engineering students ending their lives. The reason stated is that, the two students were unable to cope up with their curriculum.  What make these incidents even more heart rending is the fact that the students ended their life not because they could not cope up with the demands of the course but they could not follow the content of the lectures and text books as the medium of instruction was in English. As a result, they had accumulated a number of arrears over a period of time. With the boom of the IT/ITes sectors in India, the knowledge of English has become inevitable. One of the top criteria that define employability of engineering graduates in these sectors is fluency of the English language. The job profiles require employees to converse with clients in unknown lands. There is no harm in studying subjects in the mother tongue. In my long stint with the IT sector, i have seen students who have done their entire schooling in Tamil medium and engineering in reputed colleges with subjects taught in English, but have done extremely well in college and at the workplace. There are also people who have picked up the language of English so well over years, though they are from a rural background and have done their schooling in Tamil Medium.
To an extent, it’s soothing to hear that some of the branches of engineering are being offered now in Tamil. A welcome Initiative. China, Japan & Russia are some examples that hoist their flag high in the IT arena in spite of their population not being very conversant in English. The major problem as i understand with our setup is that there are no standards that are used to translate many of the technical terms used in engineering to and equivalent  in the vernacular. Students are left in a lurch using these terms when it comes to examinations.
To make things better for such students, there has to be a dictionary which translates the technical terms into an equivalent in Tamil. This dictionary has to be updated regularly and should be made available for students as a free download. This will weed out any possible confusions in the usage of such technical terms. Coming to the point of gaining fluency in English, all students in school taking up their studies in Tamil medium have to be given coaching in spoken English. This effort can start as early as, when the students are in the seventh or eighth standard. This can be done after regular school hours, for two or three hours a week. This will go a long way in giving them an opportunity to face the employment world with much more confidence. Language is a vehicle for communication. It should not be allowed to become a vehicle that takes the life of students.