On Dosaas...

I have always maintained that the Saravana Bhavan in Parry's Corner makes the best dosaas in the world. I have been there only a couple of times and both times I was so tired and hungry after playing cricket in the hot sun, that you could easily say I am exaggerating. But I get special pleasure in claiming that something is the best in the world, particularly when I have experienced that something.

After my entry into USA, I have visited the Saravana Bhavan in San Francisco a couple of times (it is not exactly SFO, but I get too confused about the places in Bay Area that everything is SFO for me). My expectations were great, and I should say they weren't let down. Food was as usual terrific, mangala isai was playing in the background and the board on the outside read "Uyarthara saiva unavagam". It was perfect!

The Udupi restaurant in Bellevue/Redmond area serves the worst dosaas in the world, atleast the worst I've eaten. They have about 15 to 20 varieties of dosaas and each one has something especially bad about it. But Udupi seems to specialize in murdering each and every variety - be it masala, paper or rava. Dosaas are something even the tiny eateries round the corner in Madras make to a certain standard with bare minimum infrastructure. Udupi here literally has monopoly in this area for south indian restaurants and I am sure makes great business just because of that.

Last week, I had paper roast. It may be a cliche, but I am unable to resist saying that, it literally was a paper roast. No sign of any dosaa there. Lakshmi asked me how I managed to complete about 75% of it. We used to think that Udupi here made the worst chutneys (and sambars) before. I was even sympathetic thinking that they probably didn't get good coconuts around this area. But for making a decent dosa - no such excuses.

Unfortunately, I find it extremely hard to complain then and there. I don't know what it is about me, but I seldom complain straight in the face to restaurant owners or shop keepers about the quality of the stuff they sell. It is probably very easy, but I guess there is something fundamental that I lack in that regard. So, this time too, I registered no complaint. My usual excuse is that my way of handling it is switching to another restaurant. In this case, even that is invalid since Udupi is the only one of its kind.

People who are from this area, when you find time, do visit Udupi and check out what I mean when I say something is the worst dosaa in the world. If you haven't done that already. Also, if you know of other good south indian eateries here, do leave a comment. Thanks!

On Mass Production...

Even though cricket writing doesn't really qualify as top drawer creative writing, it does suffer when an attempt is made to mass produce it.

Cricinfo, of late, has been a big culprit of trying to mass produce cricket articles. Here I am not talking about general match reports and bulletins. But rather about analysis articles that typically talk about a particular facet of the game or a player.

Take for instance, this article on VVS Laxman. Now that he has been dropped for a test, it was time to analyze Laxman as a player and his future. Dileep Premachandran (probably the best in Cricinfo's ranks) raises the now cliched "is it the end of the road?" question and rehashes some of Laxman's magical moments as a batsman. Absolute run-of-the-mill stuff with a set pattern - discuss the batsman's recent form, highlight his legend, discuss his age, close with the question.

In the last 6 months, I have seen atleast 3 or 4 articles by different Cricinfo writers on Ganguly, claiming that this is the "end of the road", "long kiss goodnight", "twilight zone" etc for the former captain. The point? While such articles coming from Dileep are barely readable, the ones from writers of lesser calibre are outright silly. I even start doubting if they were just pulled together by a computer that had a database of cricket stats and a dictionary.

Perils of mass production is all I can say.

*****
On a related note, we recently got Sun TV subscribed through a Dish antenna at home (an outright bad idea, in hindsight). There can be no better example than Sun TV Serials for the utter trash that can result when creative fields are subject to mass production.

So much so, that I even feel guilty of using the word "creative" and Sun TV in the same breath. Such is the quality of all their programs (have to reiterate - I say, ALL their programs). Two samples below.

In one of the too many mega serials (the rock bottom of Sun TVs products), the following scene -

Daughter comes back from College scared. Parents ask why. Girl explains that a few rowdy elements are chasing her every day on the road and she is afraid to step out of house. The father yells at the daughter for wearing indecent clothes (like the Salwar Kameez, which she is wearing in that scene) and "advices" that such a situation would not have come if only she wore a Dhaavani!

And no, I don't want to get started on critiquing this piece. You can do it yourself.

The second sample item is Sun TV news. Every darn day, there is a piece on the now infamous Paravai Kaaichal (bird flu). It ceased to be a news of any significance quite a while back I think - but then Sun News isn't really "News" is it?

Every day, this news item examines how the bird flu destroyed Chicken sales and is now totally eradicated and how chicken sales have really picked up. Obviously, this is a message for the ill-informed public to go buy more chicken. This advertisement reached its zenith when one of the interviewees in the news item proudly pronounced that since Tamil food uses a lot of masala and spices, even if the bird flu virus (or whatever else) was there in the bird, it will not affect the person who is eating it!

I don't want to say anything more.