Shankranthi 2009

Its festival time again and yet again I found myself banging on the doors of Halli Mane.

I have always loved festivals. I am not a very religious person and all but I have always loved festivals. Too many aspects to festivals them interesting but I am most intrigued by the feast most festivals have to offer. Since I am still in the phase of my life enjoying my bachelorhood, I usually find myself enjoying my fest at Halli Mane.

Halli Mane is a concept restaurant which serves mostly Karnataka rural food. Situated on one of the cross roads on one of Mallehshwaram's busiest roads, this restaurant has to its credit providing healthy and hygienic food to the people of Bangalore. Halli Mane organizes feasts on chosen Hindu festivals at regular intervals. This Shankranthi was one such occasion. I had my festival feast(suggi) here. And what a feast it was!

Me and Me-non reached the destination, ready for the lunch at about 1. Since both of us were working on that day, we were both in office clothes and very out of place. Every time I have gone there for my festival meal I have had an awesome experience. This time was no different. Well different a little in terms of the menu, but awesome none the less. Its like at home, like you have just finished the pooja, asking god for all the useless things in the world and you sit for a meal. There are flowers everywhere, the whole place is decorated, and the smell of the food is so very inviting. Everyone is dressed for the occasion and there are people handing over the prasadam and juice and the ladies are dressed in saris and adorn flowers and they all look so pretty. The "service" part of the experience is tip-top. Clean men with clean clothes with clean vessels with very nice looking food come and serve a feast so good, one must experience to understand.

This time, I had to pull some strings and get a back door entry cos there were close to a 1000 people waiting in line and I HAD to get back to work. We got thro the back door into the kitchen, which spans two floors just like the rest of the restaurant. We walked thro the huge cookers and huge vessels with boiling oil or steam something, on to a metal stair case and thro a door into the first floor of the main restaurant. The entry in itself was rather filmy and the food that followed, followed suit. A delicious "close to 5" course meal was laid out in front of us on a big plantain leaf. I would not like to get into the details of the menu but I promise ill pass on all the information of Halli mane to anyone who drops in a personal request. Like I said, I can pull some strings there ;)

Like in every fairy tale there is a villan, an ugly old witch or mean wolf, this habbada oota too had its villans in my fairly tale lunch.

I cant seem to get a hang of how parents can take the shit the kids do. Seriously. Kids are the future of our country... they have to be brought up well. I seriously could not understand how the fat mother of the fat kid sitting next to me could enjoy her meal without being affected this moneky of a son. He bloody would not shut his mouth. I mean, talk talk talk all the time. Not just talk, stand up, spill water, cry, make the guy serve him the kheer 4 times and make a painting out of it on the leaf, touch my leaf, touch me, kick me, stamp my shoes and all the crazy shit spoilt brats do. Seriously parents, please do something about the kids parents... you don’t want them to end up like me one day. Believe me!

Oh ya! Happy Shankranthi 2009!