Brown Motion

Many might wonder what the title means.  I will attempt to explain.  It helps if you understand some Indian lingo and also if you are born Indian.  It makes understanding this narrative much much easier than say if you were born in San Luis Obispo (SLO) and had never ventured out.  The latter might slow your understanding. But let us pretend we are on the happy path and that I as the writer will make some adjustments to ensure I share more than is required to let the SLO population follow along. We visited an Udipi food joint in Sunnyvale.  Udipi is a region of South India known for its rice based food products.  These products are consumed from morning to night as a snack or a meal.  What adds to the flavor is the accompaniments much like the orchestra to a lead singer or for the ball crazy single tracks, the other Warriors to Stef's three pointers. These food accompaniments are a lentil and spice based curry (with a soup like consistency) ca...

We love to eat out.  What with global cuisine at our doorstep and a general need to conserve time to do meaningless things like writing blogs and taking walks. So with a hankering for Udupi food we ventured to our usual desi adda (Indian food joint) in the neighborhood.  With restaurant names that evoke the lords worshipped by natives of Southern India it is unlikely for an American wanting to explore Indian cuisine to identify with but I suspect the desi diaspora volumes still provide a sound economic base to function. The physical facility is quite interesting too. It used to be an Italian restaurant with a stucco finish and long hallways intersecting each other at right angles with large glass pane windows to look in at what other people are eating.  It is now remodeled sparingly as an establishment to serve south Indian food. The name plate has just been installed taking away the plastic sheet signage that was a placeholder.  The moment you  wade throu...

A particular incident in Trivandrum highlighted the nature of customer service available today to middle class Indians. I was on a budget as I traveled the south of India and had decided to spend in the $35 to $40 per night range for air conditioned accommodations in any of the medium size cities I was visiting.  Due to undue tourist interest in certain locales some properties commanded premiums but for the most part either through smart negotiating and help of some of the unknown contacts that had pre arranged my lodging at a discount I was able to hit my target range.  Now comes the service part.  My last stop on the way back to Pune involved a night in Trivandrum.  When I showed up for check in there were two demure gals in traditional Indian sarees to welcome me to the hotel.  They began by mumbling a whole bunch of something that I could not follow. Now I know my hearing is probably going - forties and all but I swear they were below 20 dec...