Author: manuscrypts

  • Over The Top

    (first appeared in Bangalore Mirror)

    A list of new restaurants/lounges in Koramangala would be bottomless, and Over The Top Terrace Lounge is the latest addition. (yes, there’s valet parking) Two flights of stairs from Enigma on 100 feet Road (map) will take you to a wonderful open space, with wooden furniture and if you stretch your hand outside, you can even touch a tree. Yes, a real one, a rarity in these parts now. And in case you can’t handle such proximity to nature, there’s a closed section with some superb caricatures of rock legends as part of the topography. If that doesn’t please you either, you can get the best of both worlds in a section upstairs that has a different kind of wood – Holly and Bolly in the form of posters. It was pointed out to us that they were still hunting for Stallone from 25 years back. (in the movie that’s the restaurant’s namesake) There’s a pool table and quite a buzz in this area. The music is fantastic, mostly classic and alternate rock, and I hope they don’t fiddle much with it. They were operating on a sample menu when we visited, but now have an expanded version – quite an eclectic mix with Indian, Italian, Thai….

     I wondered if it was a hat tip to the name of the place that the menu was so ‘top heavy’- appetisers being a section that boasted of a relatively high number of choices. It is a melange of sorts, with various cuisines, and we started with the Five Spice Chilly. (chicken version) This also happened to be our favourite – just the right amount of spiciness and discernible flavours. The Surkh Laal Tikka was next, and though I liked it for its fieriness, my companions seemed to be slightly put off by the spice and the mustard tinge.

    The Baida Roti (mutton) was quite a favourite but the mint sauce could’ve been better. The Steamed Bao, a Chinese bread, that looks a bit like a pinch-zoomed momo, was an interesting dish. The base reminded us of a bun – texture and taste, but the filling seemed a bit over fried.

    The Buffalo Wings were too tangy and completely dominated the other flavours, quite disappointing, as was the bland Beer battered prawns, whose only hint of beer was in the menu literature. On the green side, it was mostly bad. Paneer was the only ‘vegetable’ in ‘Orange’ barring some peppers, and the dish was just sweet! The Pita bread in the Mezze platter was soft and fresh, but the dips – Hummus, Baba Ghanoush and Tatziki were insipid.

    The sample menu has less than ten options for the main course, but that seems to have changed now. They have pasta, Thai curries too. Since we had gone berserk with the starters, we decided to sample one dish each from the Indian and Burgers sections. Representing Burgers was the Burger Over The Top. There was much reason to hope – its description mentioned that it had lamb AND chicken. (yes, written that way) That indicated a ‘meating’ of minds. The presentation was no-frills but plenty of fries. The burger itself was probably the best dish of the night, with an excellent patty and mushrooms and cheese for company. The Indian section, which offered glorified versions of Makhani, Do Pyaza and such, was represented by the Raan Over The Top, which, according to the person who took the order, was worth the 45 minutes you’d have to wait for it. I’d say it was worth about 35 minutes, 5 minutes each cut for the rice that was too dry, and portions of the meat that were too chewy.

    But alas! One section of the menu continues to be in a deserted state. During our visit, the chef sympathised with our collective pain and was sweet enough to offer us ice cream. Serious ‘desserters’ that we were, we declined.

    The amazing Bangalore weather, coupled with an excellent playlist, ensured that we had a perfect ambiance for a meal under the stars. The service was friendly, though we had to specifically ask for the main course menu. The drinks, (currently outsourced to Enigma downstairs) is an area that requires work. For about Rs.1500, you could have a couple of cocktails, a non veg starter,  and a couple of main course dishes. (Inclusive of service charge and tax) At this point, you’d go there for the ambiance and the starters, but the setting is close to perfect and if the current menu manages to do even half a decent job,  (will check it out soon) then the proverbial sky is the limit for Over the Top.

     Over The Top, 2nd Floor, #2, 100 Feet Road, 5th Block, Koramangala Ph: 080- 25633899

  • A momentous truth

    Joydeep Roy Bhattacharya’s “The Storyteller of Marrakesh” is not among my favourites, mostly because it didn’t deliver what I look for in  a work of fiction. But I’m a fan of it for a different reason – there is prose in it that will haunt me for a long time.

    The book’s narrator begins the tale with the statement that there is no truth, because the moment it is revealed, it is transformed into one of many possible opinions. A few pages later, he says “Our imagination spins dreams; memory hides in them. Memory releases longing; the imagination waters the rivers with rain. They feed each other.“

    In terms of memory augmentation, despite the best documentation, I’ve felt many times that there are moments that have not been captured fully, or perhaps not captured enough at all. A presence that is felt, but cannot be captured. It is humbling to realise that acts which we lay importance to, moments which we considered precious, will be forgotten altogether or remembered in a different way from what actually happened, not just by others, but by us too.

    Much later in the book, a character shares a wonderful story, “This professor while addressing a large audience on the subject of beauty, asked that a piece of ambergris be passed from hand to hand until, by the time it reached the last person at the back of the massive hall, it had crumbled away to nothing. But the entire hall smelled of ambergris, and every person there had been touched by its essence. The professor concluded his lecture at that point, stating that he had nothing more to say on the nature of beauty.”

    ..of life, I would say. The smell of ambergris would drift between memory and imagination. If someone found words to describe it, it would exist in the imagination of the reader, but probably in a much different form than it actually was. The moment was the truth, everything else would be an opinion.

    until next time, truth be told…

  • The Catcher In The Rye

    JD Salinger

    Its perhaps a book that I should’ve read a decade and a half back, only because I could’ve related more then to the angst that permeates it. The timeframe and the narrative style would make the work seem small in scope – the book is set in about three days (not counting the recollections) and is told from the point of view of a teenage boy, who has just been expelled from his school (not for the first time) and instead of going home, spends the next few nights in a seedy hotel.
    But what makes this book unique is Holden Caulfield’s (the protagonist and narrator) way of distilling the thoughts and emotions of a teenager and making you feel for him. Indeed, there are many moments in the book that made me feel infinitely sad, though the ending seems to indicate that this is only a phase in life.
    The title is based on Holden’s mishearing of a poem by Robert Burns – Comin’ Through The Rye. Holden creates a fantasy on it – with himself being the guardian of kids who are playing in a rye field on the edge of a cliff, entrusted with the task of saving them if they are in danger of falling off.
    His attitude towards children – his sister Phoebe in specific, and adults would seem to indicate that he understands that at some point, kids will lose the qualities he likes them for (which are missing in adults) and he wants to be the heroic figure to prevent this from happening. A turning point in this role is his conversation with an English teacher of his – Mr.Antolini, who says that the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for a cause while an immature man would die nobly for it. Later Holden gives Phoebe his hunting hat, probably the symbol of his catcher identity.
    Its probably a book you need to be patient with (though its only about 190 pages) since (I felt) its only towards the end that Holden really manages to suck you into the idea of the book.

  • The masks we wear

    In TDKR, there is an interesting conversation between John Blake and Bruce Wayne, during which the former says that he knows Bruce is the Batman. He then talks of how he does not remember his mother’s death, but remembers his father’s murder well, and that the anger stayed with him. People understand, he says, but they don’t really know. They understand for a while, and they expected him to move on, to let go of the anger.  But he couldn’t do it, and when people realised that, he was sent to therapy and foster homes.

    He realised in time that for people to accept him, he would need to wear a mask that would hide his anger. He reveals that when Bruce visited the boys’ home he lived at years back, he immediately recognised that Bruce was Batman, because he himself wore a mask.

    Thanks to various experiences, I think all of us wear masks. Some of them are not because of experience, but for acceptance among others. Either ways, it works as a coping mechanism, and depending on our skills, at various levels of invisibility to those around us. Sometimes we are conscious of the mask and try to reach a place where we can live without them, by becoming strong enough to either face the past or deal with ‘acceptance’ on our own terms. Yet, despite those efforts, many a time, circumstances are such that the mask becomes the man, consciously or unconsciously. Whether or not that is a good thing is completely context dependent.

    But sometimes we are able to move on, just as Bruce was, embracing aspects of the Batman mask into his own personality. Or maybe it’s the other way – Bruce being a mask that the ‘true’ Batman personality wore. 🙂

    until next time, masker aid

  • Chianti

    D’s organisational duties and my laziness conspired to make sure that we had a ‘home’ match. Thanks to Zomato, we came to know about Chianti. It’s on the road that goes from Sukh Sagar on 100 feet Road in Koramangala towards Jyoti Nivas. (map) You can’t miss the orange sign on the left. This, I thought, is probably how Nepal feels like – India  (Sukh Sagar) towards its south and China to the north (Beijing Bites, Mainland China) They have valet parking and two-wheelers can go underground.

    You can either watch the world go by or enjoy air conditioning. We chose the former, though the brick wall and the chandeliers inside looked very inviting. We were given a DIY Bruschetta (no, it’s not Mallu) on arrival, even as we checked the menu. In that order, we rubbed (on the bread) garlic, basil, (fold first) tomatoes, and then added salt and pepper and the olive oil, but they won’t chuck you out if you tried any other order. 🙂

     

    On the paid part, we started with a Crema di Funghi and D used puppy eyes on the person who took the order, and asked for chicken to be added.  He seemed familiar, and it turned out that we had seen him at Fiorano. Same owner, apparently. Though we were told that the chicken would be added, the chicken didn’t get the memo. But the soup was thick and creamy and quite a good dish otherwise. A complimentary bread basket arrived too, and I quite liked the dip that they provided with it. For the main course, I tried to nudge D towards a thin crust pizza but she refused to bite. So we ended up with D’s Cannelloni (Beef Ragu version) and my Tagliatelle Prosciutto e Funghi. I ordered it partly because it reminded me of the Tattaglia family in The Godfather, who make attempts on Don Corleone’s life because he wouldn’t partner them in the heroin business, nor allow them to trade in it (hint hint) and partly because it had a creamy sauce and ham! D’s dish turned out to be a bit too tangy for her liking though she did like the Ricotta cheese and the overall taste. The other dish was heavy and a bit salty, though I loved the ham in it. We also had a Red Wine Sangria which we quite liked.

     

    The service is friendly, but are a bit over eager in asking for our opinions. (not the person who took our order) The meal cost us Rs. 1548 inclusive of charges and tax. Considering the location and the cuisine, I’d say it’s fair. It’s not the place you go to if you’re in a hurry. Sit back, enjoy the food and the wine, and watch the world go by.

    Chianti Ristorante & Wine Bar, #12, 5th A Block, Koramangala, Ph: 41132021/4