A Room with a view...

[Wrote this a week back when I was in Chennai, Have moved to Hyd now and Bangalore in between...]

At Chennai, I'm put up at a place called Hotel Mount Plaza just five minutes from my office in Teynampet. And one interesting place it is. After a hectic day, the menu card is a huge comic relief, they have 'Milk Shake with Milk' and 'Milk Shake without Milk' on the card. By the way, the 'Milk Shake with Milk' is cheaper by five rupees at forty when compared to the forty five rupee 'Milk Shake without Milk'. They also have 'Chinese Chowmein', 'Chicken Manjurian'and 'Chicken Shekh Kabab' on menu. I only hope no one from the Middle East turns up at this hotel or I would not imagine his feelings on seeing 'Chicken Shekh kabab' on menu. In fact, thare are too many gems to list!

The room otherwise is clean, air conditioned and has all the amenities but what takes the cake is the view from the window. The window actually opens to a Petrol pump some twenty feet below. And believe me, it is one heck of a time pass to stand there and observe the proceedings! This brings me to another famous window, the one at the Marvel Residency at Punjgutta in Hyderabad which I had mentioned here. This Marvel Residency has been in news lately for all the wrong reasons, and the window too because the thieves who broke into Alukkas at Punjagutta stayed in the same hotel and had the same view as me, that of the wall of adjoining Alukkas, one and a half feet away. I must confess that those thieves were much more creative than me coz its only now after the seven crore heist has already taken place that I could think of this possibilty!

All that apart, i found most of the people I met here in Chennai to be much simpler than those in the other parts of the country. A few of them who refused to part with samples made the kind of excuses which were really really naive. As for the food, the little said the better. I had south indian in dinner today at Saravana Bhavan in Pondy Bazaar (Yes, I know its a funny name) because I could not find any place which would dish out decent north indian around my place. I actually wasted a lot of food last afternoon after having ordered at a good looking restaurant simply because I found the food to be literally unpalatale. I can very well imagine the plight of a Southie up North now coz I can make out the difference between the South Indian that they serve here and what our restaurants generally serve as South Indian. The Sambhar at most places in Delhi is cooked like a dal, Dosa is not much different from the way a Parantha is cooked and vada almost tastes like a Pakoda.

Although it is difficult for an outsider to adjust to this city quickly because of the massive language problem, Chennai otherwise looks like a fairly decent place. Probably because the weather has been great for the last two days, it rained today in fact. I'm planning to go to Marina beach tomorrow evening. I'm already missing the energy of Mumbai.