Dining in Chennai

Discovered that Chennai has a bunch of great restaurants, from fast food to fine dining. Some that stood out in particular...

Cedars - Lebanese place. Hummus was excellent. The bread they put out with it was extremely soft, but proved to be quite filling. They also had some excellent spicy sauces on the table. The other dishes were par for the course. We ordered approx 2 dishes a piece, but the meal turned out to be quite filling, maybe because we gorged on the excellent bread, hummus and sauces. Located in a locality called Kottur Puram, on the main road that connects IIT Madras and Anna University to Nandanam

"Mmm-mafia" - Italian place. Best Italian food I've had in India to date. Perfect flavouring of dishes with classical italian herbs like basil (tulsi) and olive oil - just right and just enough to tickle your taste buds. They also had an unusual dish made of potato skins, as an appetiser, which was pretty interesting. Only gripe was that they took ages to serve, so you should plan on an open ended day. Don't remember if they serve alcohol, since I don't drink. Located on Chamiers road, in a locality called Raja Annamalai Puram

Grains of Paradise - Chinese place. Am not a big fan of Chinese, but my wife told me that the stuff was a good compromise of what is authentic vs what works for Desis. Seems to be run by the same folks that ran Mmm-mafia and is in the same building.

Murugan idly shop - Fast food...I mean, really fast! Serves authentic South Indian snacks like idly and Dosa. Offers a wide range of delectable chutneys. Service is done in an interesting way...you place an initial order, and people serve the same. As you eat, folks keep coming up offering more idlys, dosas etc. Chutneys and sambar are also unlimited. They have an airconditioned outlet in T Nagar (opposite the Subway) which we went to. Apparently, they are a chain.

More later....

On Anand G's blog

Anand Giridharadas, in his blog http://anand-g.blogspot.com/2009/01/with-spotlight-gone-true-india-can.html, seems to suggest the end of the Indian growth story, which, I guess, will be the fashion for the next few months among the media folks. This is a rebuttal to the same article.

Anand, while most examples quoted in your article are individually valid, I respectfully submit that the central thesis of your article is incorrect, because
1) It makes oversimplified and incorrect assumptions on what is driving growth ie IT exports + investor hype led growth rather than domestic-consumption led growth, balanced across sectors.
2) It overstates the impact of “whimsical investors” on the growth story and suggests that the growth was built on no foundation.
3) It puts on the classic Western lens while looking at India, pontificating about what India should prioritized, based on somewhat clichéd views of both what India is, and what it should be.
. Let me engage you on some specific points.
First, the strong domestic growth story. For example, the article completely ignores the growth of several small towns into thriving industrial clusters over the last 2 decades, based on domestic and export demand, ie from much before the IT-led hype. For example, Morbi grew into India’s largest center for clocks over the last 20 years. Coimbatore, an already entrepreneurial town, has grown into one of the largest hubs for pumps, valves etc. Rajkot, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Vapi/Ankleshwar. Pune and Vadodara are other towns that have grown multifold, due to hard work at thousands of small and medium industries amidst tremendous odds. There are over 300 such industrial centers in India. It is important to understand how much this growth really contributes to the “India Growth Story” as against the contribution of “whimsical Western investors”.
Similarly, the article seems to suggest that much of the IT led boom skimmed off available talent from the much publicized IITs, and the pipeline has suddenly run dry since there are no students even passing out from primary schools. This is not an accurate portrayal. IT growth has been driven by hundreds of engineering colleges painstakingly built up over the last 2-3 decades in large parts of South India, notably Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. From a time when a huge deficit of engineering seats existed, forcing high school graduates to terminate their education then and there, these 2 states now have surplus seats (ie more seats than 12th graduates) and are inviting students from others states to fill out the seats. Now that the engineering bottleneck has been elevated to some extent, the ones in primary and secondary education are surfacing. This does not mean that engineering graduates have suddenly evaporated, it means that more needs to be done for the class to continue growing, by elevating the primary and secondary education bottlenecks.
You had hinted at a drying and declining pipeline of primary school graduates. Literally hundreds of thousands of folks are putting their shoulder against this problem, ranging from the Ekal Vidyalayas to Pratham to Christian missions…and they are teaching modern, decent quality education to the lowest strata of society, not madrassa education. Can more be done? Sure. Did the government fail? Sure. But is primary education tanking? Buddy, this is India, not a failed state like Somalia or Pakistan.
Also, your article is silent on who is really benefitting from, and driving growth. Do you know who is graduating now from these engineering colleges? Let me share a few anecdotes. My parents’ autorickshaw driver has put his daughter through engineering, and she is now joining an IT company in Chennai. His second child has just joined engineering. Our housemaid (kaamwali bai) in Mumbai has put 2 children through engineering. A machinist’s son is now an engineer –entrepreneur. A traffic constable I know just bought a laptop on EMIs for his son, who has joined engineering college. Hence, the engineering- IT story is not driven by legacy talent from a few IITs but is being driven through massive amounts of hard work at the ground level.
.You have suggested that the IT story is over and that the companies are suddenly choking and dying, because basically they were built on Davos-related hype and adventurous Western investors. This is an insult to both the investors and the IT industry. Anyone with experience in the Indian IT story knows how it was built literally project –by project, on a base of sustained delivery excellence, the confidence that they have built isn’t going to evaporate because a few yahoos decide to shoot up innocents in Mumbai. Did folks stop investing in the US even after 9/11? Sure, industry is facing slower growth and margin compression, but on a base of 25%+ growth and margins of 20%. The suggestion that these IT cos are suddenly going belly-up is exaggerated, please talk to a few insiders in the industry to get the real picture
You mentioned New Delhi being torn up for the Commonwealth games. Have you studied where money is being spent? Do you know how much is going into good quality bus systems, metro rails and roads, rather than “birdcage stadia”? Even on the housing that you mentioned, do you know why they are being built? Most of these houses are sold at very low rates to the same 1/3rd that you mentioned do not have houses, after the event. A visit to National Games Village, Bangalore, will verify this.
You mentioned the somewhat clichéd points about potholed roads, doorless trains etc. Have you been to villages in Uttarakhand, AP, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat or even parts of Chattisgarh recently? They have concreted, all weather roads through “PMGSY program”, which have literally transformed the lives of the people there. Sure, we are nowhere near where we need to be, but painting a stagnant picture is grossly unfair.
Let me summarise my counter-arguments
1) The India growth story is the outcome of decades of hard work and investments in basics and not due to recent media hype, no matter how much members of the media overrate their own value. Sure, the quality of growth may not be what is ideal, but it is definitely not the hollow story that you portray.
2) Much of this effort is based on collective and individual efforts of millions of small people, and not due to stuff like, say, oil, to evaporate in one bad month
3) Much of the growth is propelled by solid domestic growth, and not merely IT exports
4) India is not to be seen as a country, but as a continent, with different pockets growing in very different ways. Hence, the contrasts mentioned in your articles, eg designing airbus doors in state-of-the art labs in Bangalore, vs outdated coaches not having any doors in Mumbai, will always exist. If you are suggesting that India should not design airplanes till they fix their trains, that is like arguing that EADS should not build the Airbus because folks in Bulgaria still use Ladas to go to work.

About me and this blog

Hi,
Just started blogging after years of reading those of close friends.

I live in Mumbai, though my work keeps me away from town most weekdays. My wife and I occupy one (a relatively nice one) of the several thousand decrepit looking apartments in the Western suburbs.

We moved to Mumbai 2 years ago, after stints in Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and abroad. My wife being a Mumbaikar took to the place like a mosquito to Mithi water, but I am still reeling from the "Shock and Awe" that this megacity inflicts upon me every weekend. The purpose of this blog is to capture some of the more interesting moments in life here, though it may swing from cars to geopolitics to literature to music depending purely on my whims and fancies.

Welcome to my web, dear reader!