Thindi Beedi aka Food Street aka Khau Galli in Bangalore

I'm a foodie. And I feel lucky to be in a country that keeps my taste buds titillatingly happy. Every city in India has to have a food street, and Bangalore is no exception. It didn't take much time for the gourmet in me to discover the food street in Bangalore. The Food Street or Khau Galli in Bangalore is known as Thindi Beedi  (Kannada word for food street).

How to reach:

It is located near Sajjan Rao circle  in VV Puram. If you are taking a bus or an auto, get down at Sajjan Rao circle, and the food street starts right next to it. If you are driving, you can get the driving directions from google maps:

View Larger Map


General Info:

It's a very small street (hardly a 200m stretch), and the shops are located adjacent to each other. The street is open all days of the week from 6 p.m. till about 11 p.m. It's pure vegetarian, and it's local. Although the street might look crowded over the weekends, it is still less crowded than a food court in a mall in Bangalore, and I pity Bangaloreans for this. Most of the shops don't have any seating arrangement, but eating out on the street is an exhilarating experience in itself. The prices of food items are pretty low as compared with any other eatery in Bangalore. Even for a devourer like me, it's difficult to eat stuff more than Rs. 100 even on an empty stomach.

What to eat:

The street starts with the landmark V.B. Bakery, serving its customers sincerely for more than 50 years now. The bakery is known for its fresh products, especially the cream puff and honey cakes, and calling its bread soft would be an understatement.

V.B. Bakery (left), Honey cake (top right), Cream puff (right bottom)

Eating Ramu’s ghee masala dosa will make you go on a guilt trip, especially if you have watched him make the dosas, generously doused in ghee.

Ramu's Masala Dosa

I've had the best Idli in my lifetime at a shop beside Idli Mane. The Idli is so soft and fresh that it nearly melts in your mouth. You could also try other local delicacies here such as Paddu, Kolbade, Akki Roti, Ragi Roti, and Thatte Idly.

Akki Roti, Thatte Idli, Paddu, Kolbade (Clockwise from top left)

The next must-visit stall is the one that sells bondas and bhajjis. Aloo bonda, chilli bhajji, onion pakoda, banana bhajji...the list goes on...the capsicum masala is a must try.

Capsicum Masala Bhajji (left), Assorted Bhajjis (right)

You could also hog on some of the North Indian delicacies such as paranthas, gulab jaamun, and pav-bhaaji  or some chat items like bhel, pani-puri or some Chinese ones like gobi manchurian.

Chat items

Another must-try stall is the one selling holige (puran poli). Coconut holige is my personal favorite. Even the plain Dal Holige drenched in desi ghee is sumptuous.

Holige stall

Towards the end of the road stand the corn sellers stocking over ten varieties of corn including the slightly puzzling "lemon butter baby masala corn". You'd also find fruit vendors selling fruit plates at this end.

Fruit plate (left), Corn (right)

And the last but not least - Shivanna Gulkand Center. Your trip to the food street isn't complete if you haven't tried some of the unique delicacies at this center. My personal favorite ones are:
Exotic fruits + Gulkand + Ice-cream = Butter Gulkand Fruit Salad with Ice Cream
Masala Pepsi

Shivanna Gulkand Center (left), Butter Gulkand with Ice-cream (top right), Masala Pepsi (right bottom)

There are still so many items that I haven't tried yet even after numerous visits. I wish I had two stomachs to devour more food. If you are a true foodie, then you wouldn't be in front of your computer by now :)

Disclaimer: Most of the pics in this post are taken from various sources on the internet.

Buying a new house in Bangalore

A well settled job, a dream house, a car, and a loving wife...that's the dream of the middle class in India. Anything over and above this is a bonus :) We talked about marriage in the last post. Let's talk about the dream house in this post. I've tried to compile the info I gathered in the last few days by reading through some online material and through discussions with a lot of people. See if you find the following info useful while buying a new house in Bangalore.

Time:

When should one buy a house? Well, the simplest answer would be: As early as possible. Real estate prices in Bangalore are shooting up day-by-day. So, if you can't afford to buy a house today, chances are very bleak that you'll be able to afford it tomorrow. Contrary to the common misconception, real prices never come down. Even in the worst recession of 2008-09, the real estate prices remained leveled, to say the least. The only difference during the recession times is that it's difficult to find buyers. But that stage is generally temporary. The real estate prices in Bangalore are still half-way through the prices in  Mumbai and Delhi. I personally feel that Bangalore has a potential of reaching Mumbai or Delhi in the coming few years.

Budget:

This is the time you'll realize how you have fared so far since you started earning. The savings thus far will give you an estimate on your spending habits. While this might teach a lesson to a few, some might get a sweet little shock. The following things might help you in deciding your budget while buying a house:

• You need to pay at least 20% of the total cost from your pocket upfront. Make sure that you can manage to accumulate that much cash in a short period of time.
• Banks will give loan only up to 80% of the total cost. Public Sector Banks like SBI are very strict in this regard, whereas private banks can give even up to 85-90% of the total cost, depending upon your financial status.
• Banks will sanction loans keeping in mind that your EMI should not be higher than 50-55% of your monthly take-home (after all the deductions). Again, private banks are a little generous in this regard too. Just google for EMI calculator and you'll find tons of those available online. Try out different combinations of the loan amount, tenure, and the rate of interest, and check your affordability.

Location:

Choosing the location can be a real headache, when you begin your search. Bangalore is expanding in all the four directions and this can give you a nightmare in deciding your location. You should not decide on your house location depending on your current working location, because you never know where you might land up a few years down the line. A few things that might help you in choosing your location:

• Subscribe to the Times of India (I hate to say this), especially the Friday edition. Real estate ads is the only useful thing in ToI, which otherwise is full of crap.
• Read through some of the online resources such as blogs, real estate forums like www.indianrealestateforum.com, etc.
• Talk to people. Talk to your friends, office colleagues, acquaintances who are staying in different localities. The actual residents are the best sources of information of any locality. 
• Many builders arrange a site visit (free pick-up and drop) to the property. You can leverage those. Otherwise, you can go on your own to a particular area and see all the properties in and around that area.

Type of house:

Type:	Apartment	Independent House	Villa
Pros:	closely knit-community, common amenities, secure,  easy to put on rent, you get everything ready-made	you own your land,  you get to choose the building architecture and floor plans, more free space for gardening, playing, etc., you can control the quality of construction	you own your land, more free space for gardening, playing, etc., secure, common amenities, you get everything ready-made
Cons:	you physically own a very small land share, limited or no flexibility in choosing the floor plans, no control over the quality of construction	not very easy to put on rent, security concerns, no common amenities, more time and efforts in building your own house	generally expensive, generally in the outskirts of the city, not very easy to put on rent, limited or no flexibility in choosing the floor plans

Builder:

The prices of renowned builders could be at least 20-25% more than a normal builder. Although the prices of smaller builders are on the lower side, their projects are very prone to the following issues:

• Many-a-times, you won't get what was promised.
• Delays in completing the projects.
• Legal issues.
• Compromised quality of construction.

Some of the projects of even the renowned builders are plagued by these issues, but chances of such issues surfacing are lesser with the renowned builders, hence the premium price (same logic as for branded clothes, etc.). There's also a common belief that properties of renowned builders tend to last longer and would fetch more resale value a few years down the line. However, if budget is a constraint, you can get a good house by a smaller builder in a good locality. But do verify thoroughly on the above-mentioned aspects as much as possible before finalizing.

Renowned builder or otherwise, do bargain on the final price of the house. In most of the cases, as much as you are desperate to buy the house, the builder too is desperate to sell it.

Do make sure that the property you are buying is approved by the various renowned banks, especially SBI. These banks do a review of the legal documents, etc. of the project before giving approval. SBI is supposed to be very strict in this verification.

Loan:

A lot of options are at your disposal as far as home loan is concerned. If they find that you are capable of repaying the loan, banks will chase you like anything. I was advised to go for SBI by most of the people who had opted for private banks. SBI generally offers a lower rate of interest, and doesn't have any hidden charges. They are also pretty strict in verifying the property documents before approving the loan. However, you may have to run around a bit, if you choose SBI, whereas private banks will come to your doorstep.

Banks will try to enforce you to take home loan insurance, along with the home loan. However, as of today, there is no mandate from RBI on taking insurance for the home loan. I personally prefer taking a simple term insurance plan, which would cover even the loan amount, than going for a home loan insurance.

If the house is under-construction, you will have an option of going for either pre-EMIs or full-EMIs. For an under-construction property, the loan amount is disbursed in stages by the bank to the builder. In pre-EMIs, you pay only the interest component of the amount that's disbursed by the bank to the builder at a particular stage. So, you will need to pay smaller EMIs in the beginning until you get the possession of the house and the full-EMIs start. However, your loan tenure would generally increase if you are opting for pre-EMIs, as the repayment of the principal component of the loan starts only after you get the possession of the house. To cut a long story short, go for pre-EMIs only if you are really short on cash in the initial stages of the loan. Otherwise, always go for full-EMIs.

You almost end up paying double the loan amount by the time you repay the loan completely. So, stretch your limit as much as possible and take only the minimal required loan.

Income tax benefits:

Loads of stuff is available online on this:

http://www.raagvamdatt.com/income-tax-it-benefits-of-a-home-loan-housing-loan-mortgage
http://www.onemint.com/2011/11/30/section-24-income-tax-benefit-of-a-housing-loan/

Maggu's Dilemma - Love Marriage ya Arranged Marriage?

Maggu was good at studies since his childhood. A bachelor's degree in Engineering from IIT and an MBA from IIM spoke volumes about his academic achievements. Working for a top-notch Consulting firm with a hefty salary package, he was living the dream of today's Indian youth. All was going well until he reached the age when it was time to get married. Having devoted his whole youth to studies and career, and having studied in a highly-skewed-sex-ratio environment, he hardly had time/opportunities to interact with women (of his age). So, when most of his not-so-qualified (non-IIT, non-IIM) friends were getting married to their girlfriends, Maggu felt an intense peer-pressure. 

Having been under pressure many a times in his academic life and having come out with flying colors in such situations, he was confident about tackling this situation quite easily with his meticulous planning and hard-work. He planned to solve this issue just the way he had been cracking the client use-cases in the Consulting world. He decided to first brainstorm on the issue at hand, then list out the possible solutions, evaluate those, and finally arrive at the feasible solution. To begin with, theoretically, he had two choices at this juncture: Love Marriage and Arranged Marriage. He decided to brainstorm on Love Marriage first. (In his calculative mind) "hmm...Let me see...For this, first I've to fall in love with a girl. Then, I've to convince her to fall in love with me. This would entail a substantial amount of investment in time and money. Also, going by the scracity driven high-handedness developed in the so-called decent-enough girls, the probability of finding such a suitable girl is going to be very bleak, especially given that I'd be finding a very little time for this extracurricular activity in my tight work schedule. Then there are certain other issues such as convincing the parents if the girl is from other caste/religion, be the mediator if any party raises any concern, etc."

All in all, this looked like a very time-consuming and stressful activity and the RoI (Return on Investment) didn't appear that appealing to Maggu. So, he decided to brainstorm on Arranged Marriage now. (Again in his calculative mind) "hmm...Well, for this too, I've to search for a suitable bride. Here again, finding such a suitable match isn't going to be any easier, given the number of constraints that come into picture such as religion, caste, horoscope, education, career, looks, family background, etc. The bright side in this is that my parents would be helping me in finding the suitable match and my strong academics and career would play a valuable role. But then there are certain open questions such as how can I decide to spend the rest of my life with a person in just a couple of meetings? What if my parent's choice and my choice are way too different? What if I'm not able to find the kind of a girl I've in my mind? What if our frequencies do not match after marriage?...and so on..."

These questions created chaos in Maggu's otherwise sharp mind. Evidently, there was no clear winner. As the time was passing, his anxiety and confusion levels kept increasing. Maggu started to have a feeling that he was too late into the game and should have delved into this issue much earlier. Such was the intensity of this pandemonium that Maggu went into depression and his performance at work took a hit too. Amidst all of this confusedness, forget about the resolution of the issue, all he could come up with were more and more questions: What's the use of my IIT-IIM qualification if I haven't found a girl to marry yet? Why did parents keep telling me not to mingle with girls and rather concentrate on studies? Are my non-IIT/non-IIM friends much happier than I am, even though I've toiled a zillion times more than they have done so far? Why didn't they have a course in college on getting girl-friends which I could have topped and not be in this situation? What went wrong?

And this was the first time Maggu felt in his life that he had failed in something. He realized that there are many other important things in life than studies and career. He also realized that certain things in life can't be solved even by the best analytical minds; such matters are better left to the heart to deal with.

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This post was written for the IndiBlogger contest on LoveYaArrange.

Satyamev Jayate and the great Indian ‘cynical’ middle class

Having grown up watching the serials of the kinds of Vyomkesh Bakshi, Malgudi days, Chanakya, Surbhi, Bharat – ek khoj, etc., the quality of today’s tv shows (barring a few) makes me vomit, to the extent that I’ve stopped watching tv for quite some time now. Gone are the days when we used to wake up to the tunes of mile-sur-mera-tumhara and all the family members used to be glued to the tv for watching 7pm news. (Well, the less said about today’s news channels, the better. Another topic, another day…). 

This spirit was rekindled when Amir Khan launched his much awaited tv serial – Satyamev Jayate. The concept is so simple, yet so catchy. Behind the glory of ‘shining’ India, lies a bitter truth which no one is daring to unearth. The idea has been very well conceptualized, thoroughly studied, and perfectly executed in a way that it touches a wide range of audience. Having seen the deteriorating conditions in villages (which constitutes more than 70% of the population in India) first hand, the so called glories of a handful of city population doesn't impress me much. The show has thrown some light on a number of critical issues that are plaguing Indian society today. While a major section of the society has welcomed this initiative with open arms, a certain section of the society (the cribbers) is cribbing about certain things such as Amir Khan using this as a platform to promote himself, the show showing India in a bad light, etc. While I certainly feel that the show has its own shortcomings, I still think it's a very good beginning towards a great cause. If Amir Khan is able to promote himself with this show, so be it. As long as the show is spreading awareness about the problems that the society is facing, I think it's a well spent hour of the week. More importantly, it's bringing back some value to the television. 

I've observed that most of these cribbers belong to the great Indian middle class. This is the same middle class which has always been finding some way or the other to be unhappy in whatever situation they are in. Having been through a lot of hardships throughout their lives, some of us have become so much cynical that we have lost hope. Seeing a myriad of issues surrounding us, we've lost faith that this situation could ever be reversed. The bad is when we lose faith that we can do something good to the society, but the worst is when we try to pull back people who haven't lost faith yet. In my humble opinion, we have no right to question someone's intentions, when we ourselves have done zilch towards such a cause. I think it's high time we stop throwing mud on each and everyone, and at least appreciate the good things being done by a handful, if not contribute towards it.

When should we drink water?

We all know that water is good for our health. It helps in cleansing the body of toxins, helps digestion, increases metabolism and so on. The most common question I've seen people asking about water drinking habits is: how much water should one drink in a day? And there are various standard answers available to this question. Some go by the "8 by 8" rule - drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, while some customize it further depending upon the body weight. In a nutshell, we do have some concrete answer to this commonly asked question.

However, I haven't seen many people bothered about when one should drink water throughout the day. And perhaps due to this lack of interest in this question, I'm yet to see a concrete answer to this question either. I've seen people recommending drinking/not-drinking water at all the possible times throughout the day: before the meal, during the meal, after the meal, before the workout, during the workout, after the workout, so on and so forth. People have proposed various theories supporting their claims on when one should drink/not-drink water. Out of those, I'm convinced about the following two things so far: Drink water the first thing in the morning and Drink water some time before the meal.

For the remaining timings, I'm still searching for the right answers...