• Cafe Masala

    Cafe Masala is brought to you by the BJN group, and has ‘Aromas of China’ and ‘Vaayu’ for neighbours on the top floor of Eva Mall, Brigade Road.

    We made reservations in advance, and i think a wait of about 15 minutes would’ve happened if not for that. We were given a reasonably good table, with comfortable seating, though some poor staff were dealt with sternly by my wife when they tried to pull one of our chairs for an adjoining table. She treats the results of our shopping expeditions with a great deal of adoration, you see, and so, those covers on the floor would be sacrilege.

    While the menu does have some continental stuff, a lot of it is meant for the evening snacks category, and not dinner. But we did manage to get some corn soup, which was quite good. And like good mix and matchers, we ordered mutton pepper chops, murgh bhartha, kulcha and butter naan for the main course.  The mutton chops gravy was awesome, though not recommended for people with low spice tolerance. The chicken was also good, but for once, was overshadowed by the above. And yes, special mention for the fact that they gave us a Lachcha Paratha instead of the Butter Naan, and when we pointed it out, we were told that this was how Butter Naan was made here, but it could be replaced. We’re yet to figure that out.

    You’ll notice from later reviews that we are no novices when it comes to desserts, but this time, we were too stuffed, although the menu listed some decent options. 🙁

    The pricing is as per the regular BJN standards, and all the above came upto about Rs.650.

    The ambience is pretty good, somewhere between the rgular noisy neighbourhood cafe, but with an effort to make it look more organised. We noticed a lot of large groups there. And yes, there’s even a one-man-band, who plays requests. Heard him play MLTR and Bollywood numbers, so metal guys can consider that a warning.

    Overall, it was quite a pleasant experience, and definitely makes it to the ‘please visit again’ list.

    Address: No.60, 5th Floor, Eva Mall, Brigade Road, Bangalore
    Phone 41113388, 41118477, 41118466, 41118422

    Photos at Zomato

  • Lovegames

    It was easy to say ‘love all’, but he’d have to make a choice. The tall, slim, squeaking Serbian brunette, or the taller, slimmer, shrieking,Russian blonde. Both were too good to be co-recipients of his affection. Perhaps he should watch one more tennis match between them before he finally chose between Ana and Maria.

    until next time, match makers

  • LOC

    And we draw our lines. They might be invisible to those who come in, but we expect strict adherence from them, and sometimes we communicate it subtly or explicitly but sometimes not at all. And when they leave, we can’t complain. Perhaps they don’t like our lines, or perhaps they have their own lines.

    until next time, draw your own conclusions

  • Social Responsibility

    And the mother of ’em all is finally here- My Space. I wonder if the promos happening on Channel V for its campus star is My Space’s idea of an Indian launch. I hope not, because i kinda liked Big Adda’s efforts, and hope to see a good brand campaign from My Space.Meanwhile, i read this article recently, which talked about social networking fatigue.

    While it did make interesting reading, and gave what could be a popular perspective about the sites, i would tend to disagree on the fatigue factor.While I admit to being a more recent convert to all the sites, i’ve been on orkut and facebook long enough to have come across fatigue if it was lurking there. In fact, the case could be true of orkut where my involvement has perhaps seen a downturn after i joined facebook. But thats because Orkut doesnt have enough meat (IMHO) to keep me interested, and that’s precisely what differentiates Facebook. Its not just about messages and photo sharing, vampires/werewolves and forwards, its also about applications which cater to your interests in life – be it word games like scrabble, Tv shows like Heroes, or the philosophy of Ayn Rand, or a simply super group like ‘I love trashy Hindi movies’, the list just goes on.

    I can’t see fatigue setting in when i’m playing scrabble with friends, while buying and selling in the fantasy stock exchange, and doing a likeness test with my friends and so on. In fact, the kind of fatigue i see is in the number of sites that keep cropping up. While (with the entry of My Space) we have three globally recognised networks, we also have the local clones like minglebox, yaari, Big Adda etc. And here’s were the fight will happen.Thats because there are users, and quite possibly the majority, who are into the social networking sites because its the in thing, and offers the (by now) plain vanilla benefit of connecting with friends. Once that connecting is done, their attention span becomes fleeting, and they’d hop, skip and jump to the newest site before you can say ‘Scrap’.

    So every new site launched and every new campaign for them would create a ripple in that market.But then, there’s also the user who’ll try to derive value from a network which offers such avenues for him, and for him there’s no fatigue. If the site keeps adding stuff that will add to the user stickiness, then they would have to worry only if a better product comes into the market, not because of the wannabes that appear from time to time.

    In essence, social networks, as every other commodity, will be solely responsible for how long they keep the user, depending on the value they create.So you see, the writing, as they say, is on the wall 🙂

    and i bid adieu, wishing you all the best in your socialising efforts..

  • Sister Act

    My sister’s college group finished their social project, and built the local tribals a treehouse to show their appreciation, with a strict warning nailed to it -‘maximum 4 people’. A few days later they heard the tree house had collapsed from overloading. We asked her who was dumber – the literate students or the illiterate tribals.

    until next time, tree has a crowd