Shivanasamudra alias Bluff, the site of Asia’s first hydro-electric project set up under the visionary eyes of Diwan K. Seshadri Iyer, were in their “resplendent beauty” on Monday as water released from the Krishnarajasagar and Kabini dams roared down the Gagana Chukki and Bara Chukki water falls on Monday.

Photographs: Karnataka Photo News

Bangalore’s IT industry invokes a schizoid voyeurism. Although it has been around longer than Infosys, not too many doff their hat to Wipro. Although its founder didn’t have to get his wife to part with 12,000 rupees, Azim  Premji doesn’t quite have VIPs traipsing through the turnstiles and drooling over his campus.

The reasons have as much to do with Infy’s PR as, perhaps, Wipro’s ownership pattern. In the just-released book The Long Revolution—the birth and growth of India’s IT industry (HarperCollins), the science journalist Dinesh C. Sharma narrates a telling story on the extraordinary (and exemplary) nationalism of Premji’s father:

“The initial success of companies like DCM in the area of computer manufacturing and the growing popularity of microprocessor-based systems attracted many Indian commercial houses to this sector. Among them was a company named Western Indian Products Limited, based at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. It used to manufacture cooking oil under the brand name Sunflower Vanaspati, and a laundry soap called 787, a byproduct of oil manufacture.

“The company was established by Mohamed Hasham Premji in 1945. He was a leading rice merchant and commission agent in Bombay. When Mohammed Ali Jinnah set up the planning committee of the Muslim League (on the lines of the national planning committee of the Indian National Congress) in September 1944, he invited Hasham Premji to be a part of it. But Premji did not want to join the League formally for ‘personal and business reasons’. He was then assured by Jinnah that he could serve without publicly signing the Muslim League pledge¹.

“Jinnah reportedly sought out Premji once again when he was forming the first cabinet in Pakistan to serve as his fnnance minister. But Premji rejected the offer and decided to stay on in India and nurture his oil business².”

¹ Ian Talbot, “Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All India Muslim League 1943-46″, Modern Asian Studies, 1994, pp 875-89

² Rohit Saran, The World’s Richest Indian, India Today, 6 March 2000

***

Also read: Can Azim Premji do what government can’t/won’t do?

Look, who’s ordering a by-two coffee at Wipro?

With the Kapila river rising to the brim, hundreds of people lined up on the 270-year-old bridge in Nanjangud, to tell their children and grand-children that they were there, that Sunday in July 2009, when they just bent over and touched the surface of the water.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Once upon a time eating Nanjangud hallu pudi

T.S. NAGARAJAN: The most memorable house I’ve photographed

Jairam Ramesh is the ultimate outsider looking in. Born in Chikamagalur but not quite a Kannadiga. Tam-Brahm but brought up in Bombay. An engineer by education but better known as an economist. A columnist and television anchor, but not quite a journalist. Half-Kannadiga, half-Tamil but now a Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh.

Yet, while the media likes to count Jairam along with S.M. Krishna, Veerappa Moily, K.H. Muniyappa and Malikarjuna Kharge as part of “Team Karnataka” in the Union council of ministers, little is known about the man from coffeeland who possesses the most over-sized pate in Indian politics and a mot juste for every occasion.

Minister of state for commerce in the previous Manmohan Singh team who had glass doors installed at his office (”because he has much to hide!” in the words of a long-time political observer), Jairam is now minister for environment and forests. In the first 100 days, the wordsmith has already crossed swords with three chief ministers, B.S. Yediyurappa (over the Bellary mines issue), Ashok Chavan (over the location of the new airport in Bombay), and Sheila Dixit (over relaxing the ban on plastic covers).

So, who is Jairam Ramesh?

***

1) Son of Prof C.K. Ramesh, who taught structural engineering at IIT Bombay, where Jairam later went on to study “girlfriend repellent” mechanical engineering. Studious Jairam often was pelted with chalk by his B. Tech classmates. His crime? He wouldn’t walk out with the backbenchers even if the professor wasn’t in.

2) Married to K.R. Jayashree, daughter of former IAS officer K.V. Ramanathan. The couple have two sons, one of whom is studying law at Oxford. Although a devout Hindu, he is also seriously into Buddhism. Suffice to say, Jairam’s personal life is the topic of more than ordinary interest in the family. His mother Sridevi Ramesh lives on Chord Road in Bangalore.

3) Jairam did a brief stint at Business India, once the pre-eminent business fortnightly owned by Ashok Advani. That began his association with tiger researcher Valmik Thapar’s sister Malavika Singh, the eminence grise of Business India who launched the company’s now-defunct business channel, BiTV. Jairam was part of Malavika Singh gossip sessions with such worthies as Navin Patnaik, now Orissa chief minister, in attendance, and now carries the tag of being an ace gossip.

4) Former planning commission member Abid Hussain has been quoted as saying  “Jairam has the highest IQ I have ever come across in anybody and energy levels that 10 horses can’t match.”

5) Jairam dropped out of a PhD program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after getting a master of science (MS) in public management at the Heinz College at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1977 to take a job at the World Bank.

Quotable quote: “The rate of growth of any economy is inversely proportional to the number of economists. Look at South Korea, look at India. South Korea produces no economists, but it has three times the growth rate as India, which produces three times the number of economists.”

6) Upon his return, he did a stint as a backroom boy with economist Lovraj Kumar and was an Officer on Special Duty in V.P. Singh government. He became a key fixture in Manmohan Singh’s finance ministry in the Narasimha Rao regime. As an example of the licence-quota-permit raj that Singh unshackled, Jairam has said his father waited 15 years to buy a car.

As long back as 1979, he gave a clear indication of his main interests by co-editing a book titled Mobilising Technology for World Development.

7) Jairam Ramesh and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, both excellent quizzers, were part of the 1975 Mood Indigo team at IIT Bombay. Jairam was the man Nandan tapped when the Infosys IPO was undersubscribed in 1993. Nandan asked Jairam to put Rs 10,000 in the company; Jairam didn’t and calls the move “the single biggest mistake of my life“.

8) Has a deep interest in history and when he wrote a column for The Times of India, revealingly chose the pseudonym Kautilya. He says he used to spend two-three days researching the topic: “Most columnists in India write for senior government officials to read. They write to be noticed by the government. And they write in a language only they can understand. I am writing for an ordinary person who wants to know more and more about economics. I try to de-mystify economics and issues. It is not an easy thing.”

9) Workaholic Jairam hosted a Sunday evening business roundtable on Doordarshan in the early 1990s called Crossfire produced by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group, and a daily morning show called Business Breakfast on Star Plus.

The legend goes that for 480 days he woke up at 3.30 am, read the morning papers, and hosted the programme. He would arrive at the studios in a Fab India kurta and pyjama, remove the kurta, and host the show with a shirt and the pyjama. He was also famously known to be addicted to mint with a hole, finishing off a couple of packets a day.

10) His North Block office as was famous for the music that emanated from it all day. Jairam, who counts music among his interests, has a huge collection of music CDs, from Kumar Gandharva to Miles Davis.

11) In the early 1990s, Jairam told friends there were four reasons why he thought he wouldn’t make it as a politician: “I am Brahmin, I am South Indian, I am good-looking, I am brilliant.”

12) Jairam is an Iyengar and wags say the line “this website is a public service so that you can leverage my knowledge and experience,” as proof that the three forms of the human ego are I-Iyer-Iyengar. Mani Shankar Aiyar, with whom Jairam fell foul early, is reported to have said, “The only thing Jairam Ramesh is interested in is Jairam Ramesh.”

Both Mani and Jairam later fell foul of Sanjaya Baru, the journalist turned media advisor to the prime minister. Jairam is seen to have played a key role in the installation of Harish Khare as Baru’s replacement this time around.

13) Jairam Ramesh fancies himself as a wordsmith, but is notorious for shooting his mouth off with amazing regularity. Yet, something in his persona endears him to the powers that be in the Congress first family who are famously not known to tolerate dissent.

He told Asiaweek magazine in 2000: “Two years down the line [after the Congress' 1998 election defeat], Sonia Gandhi is seen as a loser and the morale in the party is very low… People who saw her as a ticket to nirvana now see her as a ticket to narak [hell]…. If things go the way they are, the Congress will not come back to power for another 50 years.” He also famously rubbed off Gandhi family retainee, Ambika Soni, on the wrong side on the Ram Sethu issue, but without sustaining any visible injury.

14) Jairam is known to draft many of Sonia Gandhi’s English speeches. He wrote and re-wrote the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme in 2004 on his Fujitsu notebook at 99 South Avenue six times. He now uses a Sony Viao laptop.

15) Created a diplomatic boo-boo in 2006 by trashing the India-Brazil-South Africa summit in an interview with Patricia Campos Mello of the influential Estado do Sao Paulo daily, even as the prime minister was winging his way to the Brazilian capital. Later, when asked “why” by a veteran political correspondent, Jairam is said to have said: “But she was so beautiful.”

16) Although he served as deputy chairman of the Karnataka State Planning Board, chief minister S.M. Krishna is said to have refused to give him a Rajya Sabha seat, because, according to a well-known quizzer, “SMK has a slight aversion for bright people”.

Quotable quote-II: “The early generation of our founding fathers were all educated in England. Our tragedy is that not many crossed the Atlantic. In fact, there were only two of our leaders who crossed the Atlantic, and they made a substantial difference to India.“

17) Although he is 55, Jairam has a formidable reputation as a “whiz-kid” and “backroom boy” in the Congress, and is even credited for having his finger on the political pulse, by pushing the Congress’s aam admi slogan in 2004. However, Jairam, who served as deputy chairman of the Karnataka State Planning Board, is said to have predicted 120 seats for S.M. Krishna’s Congress in the assembly polls. He got 65.

18) Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch admiral who headed a Chinese fleet which reached the Malabar coast of India in the early 15^th century (some have argued he reached America, before Columbus, as well) is a particular favourite with Jairam. He appears several times in his book Making sense of Chindia.

Photographs: courtesy Bharatwaves, Scott Adams, Outlook, Flickr

Also read: 12 things no one’s telling us about namma Nandu

Rain water does strange things to people. Girls throw away their umbrellas and get their clothes wet (or at least the ads and movies say they do). Dogs curl up and decide the end of the world is nigh. And boys, well, boys think they are Michael Phelps, even if it is an overflowing river like Varada was, near Haveri in North Karnataka, on Saturday.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Whichever way you hit the water, it’s cool

Mungaaru Male: the real version oer the reel

The serious types squirm at short, simple questions, calling them frivolous, trivial. But as a wise guy said, there are no silly questions in life; only stupid answers. Indeed, as the Proust Questionnaire in Vanity Fair magazine shows, staccato answers can reveal more about a person than whole pages.

A number of publications use the Proust Questionnaire as a device to draw out people. The Hindu Business Line featured Bhamy V. Shenoy this week.

Link via Anand V.

Also read: The the great great Sri Sri ngo ngo scam scam

An epitaph to the literate, educated middle-class

Shekhar Gupta uses the brouhaha over HRD minister Kapil Sibal’s urgency to introduce reforms in education and E. Sreedharan’s scorching pace to complete the Delhi Metro project, to say that the modern Indian mind is chronically allergic to speed and scale, in The Indian Express:

“In our popular culture, the honest, efficient and sincere are stray romantics and, ultimately, losers; a trend you see in the defining movies of each decade. There is a sense of resignation, an acceptance of the inevitability of misery, under-performance, shortages, delays, waste and corruption.

“Only, it is unsustainable at a time when our people are getting younger, more questioning, demanding and impatient. One way or the other, they will refuse to live with this contradiction between what they want and expect and what the system feels comfortable delivering. They will either force a change, or vote with their feet.”

Read the full article: Babuji  dheere chalna

K. JAVEED NAYEEM writes: On the morning of the first of July, which happens to be Doctors’ Day, I received a telephone call from our famed photojournalist T. S. Satyan, who after having done us all proud, now lives in retirement here in Mysore.

After wishing me, he said he wanted to send me a book as a Doctors’ Day gift and, therefore, asked for my address.

Quickly surmising that I would lose an opportunity to spend a few moments with him if I allowed him to send it to me by post or courier, I offered to go over to his house and collect it personally.

He seemed satisfied with the arrangement I had suggested and hung up saying that he would look forward to my visit.

Although I do not need any coaxing to accept a book as a gift or even as a loan, I was too preoccupied with my routine work for the whole of the next week, I somehow never got down to collecting it until I received a second call from him which made me feel very guilty that my humility did not match his.

I quickly apologised for the delay in picking it up and offered to do it immediately. In less than thirty minutes I was at his place when his wife opened the door and let me into their drawing room. This was my second visit to their Saraswathipuram house and she seemed a little disappointed that I had not brought my wife along.

I explained that I had just made a small detour to their house while shuttling between rounds at two hospitals. The two ladies certainly had hit it off very well the last time they had met when I had paid Satyan a visit before writing my first article about him in connection with his birthday.

Although I had spent considerable time with him then and it had seemed as if I was imposing a strain on him, I had returned with a feeling that I had not had a sufficiently long chat. This is how it always is whenever I have a tete-a-tete with someone who is so full of information and experience and shares them through many interesting anecdotes. This time too he was no different.

A very composed and calm man with no airs of any kind, telling me about his life and the times he had seen while I was slowly sipping the coffee served by his wife.

Seeing a framed copy on the wall across where I was seated, our conversation turned to his very famous shot of Jawaharlal Nehru entering the Parliament house in 1963 to present the white paper on the Chinese aggression that had spurned and trampled the Panchasheel Agreement.

The picture shows a deeply contemplative and almost sad looking Prime Minister with the document clutched in his right hand walking against a dark and foreboding looking backdrop with daylight streaming in through five windows that ironically symbolise the five elements of the now broken agreement with China.

He explained to me that he had accompanied Nehru to the Parliament house in his car after a photo session at his house to capture him against this symbolically significant background for this shot which he had visualised in his mind and planned well in advance.

The book he gave me is very aptly titled Complications. Authored by Atul Gawande, it is a gripping account of a young surgeon’s experiences with the practice of medicine. In it are very moving accounts of the eternal struggle of the men and women who try to do some good as doctors against steep and unpredictable odds often to be met with disappointment, failure and sometimes even with unfair criticism and castigation.

The book makes riveting reading and I feel every doctor and patient should read it and Satyan could not have chosen a better gift for me or for that matter even a better recipient for it this time!

When it was time for me to say goodbye to this great man, I was deeply emotional about his affection and love for me. As we stood for a brief while at the door, I was clutching the book with both hands and he was clutching the mug of coffee from which I had just drunk.

Again, with both hands and, of course, with all the simplicity and grace that is born only out of real greatness.

K. Javeed Nayeem is a practising physician who writes a weekly column for Star of Mysore, where this piece originally appeared

Star of Mysore facsimile: courtesy Tasveer

Also read: T.S. Satyan on the elements of photography

Once upon a time, early in the morning in Mysore

The accidental artist

churumuri records with regret the demise of D.K. Pattammal, the doyenne of Carnatic music, in Madras today, 16 July 2009. She was 90 years old.

Damal Krishnaswamy Pattammal overcame an orthodox upbringing, where she was not permitted to sing for friends or relatives, to become part of the Trinity of Carnatic classical music, together with M.S. Subbulakshmi and M.L. Vasantha Kumari.

Pattammal said in a 1999 interview that she was the first Brahmin to come on stage as a Carnatic singer, like Rukminidevi was for Bharatnatyam.

“I was 10 when my father’s friends approached him to let me sing for a gramophone record company. First, my father refused, fearing that the record will be played at all and sundry places. He did not want the works of great masters like Thyagaraja and Dikshitar and his daughter’s voice to he heard at such places. Then Dr. Srinivasan of Kancheepuram, who is my husband’s uncle (I was not married then), persuaded my father to let me sing. My school headmistress, Ammukutti-amma, also urged my father to let me accept the offer. After a lot of pressure from a number of his friends, my father finally agreed.”

Pattammal had a Mysore connection. Her son Laxman Kumar is married to Shanta, daughter of R.K. Pattabhi, brother of the novelist R.K. Narayan and cartoonist R.K. Laxman. Pattammal was a regular visitor to the family’s residence in Mysore, both in Lakshmipuram and Yadavagiri.

Link via Chetan Krishnaswamy

Read the Frontline interview

Also read: Can Carnatic music ever change the cheri pasangal?

Balamurali Krishna: ‘If it sounds good to your ear, it’s Carnatic music’

The accidents on the Delhi Metro project have raised serious questions over worker (and public) safety, and somewhat clouded a proud infrastructure success. Unmindful of all that, three unsung heroes toil manfully on a pillar for the Bangalore Metro project on CMH Road on Wednesday.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Lots of work overground for an underground rail

The unsung heroes in the dreams of Bangaloreans

E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes from Bangalore: Basavanagudi and Malleshwaram are two of the oldest localities of Bangalore which are still in demand amongst those who seek houses to rent or to buy.

Located at  different corners of the City, there always has existed some kind of healthy rivalry between their residents. Both consider their area as the ultimate for culture and aesthetics, and therefore have a nose up in the air.

When Jayanagar came into being in the early 1960s, old-timers in Basavanagudi and Malleshwaram quickly dismissed it as a gawky upstart, a major breeding ground for mosquitoes, a sobriquet the “queen of localities” is unable to shake off what with dengue and chikungunya ravaging Bangalore today.

***

Basavanagudi has changed beyond description for those who were born and grew up there, but pockets of this locality like Benne Govindappana chhatra, Gavi Gangadhareshwara devasthana and Basavanagudi Club meant mainly for retired people still retain the old charm.

Basavanagudi, named after the temple for Basava or Nandi, has always been a sleepy little locality which made you sleepier the moment you entered Lalbagh , Bugle Rock or M.N. Krishna Rao Park, especially after eating a masala dose at MTR or Vidyarthi Bhavan, even if it was a vulgar fraction of 4 by 7.

You would still feel sleepy if you went to Parvathy Chandrashekara boulevard near Saalumara beside National high school, or Hanumantha Nagar Park (renovated by the then mayor Chandrashekar) for eating sippe hosa kadale kayi and bella, komrike hannu or ginimuthi mavinakayi with kharadapudi.

This sleep-inducing nature of Basavanagudi was attributed 30% to the genial climate in Bangalore, 40% to the fresh air in the parks, and 30% to the snacks that made Bangalore famous.

Gandhi Bazaar was the main market and one bought vegetables in any of the half-a-dozen shops near the “circle”, more so from the shop of father and sons Rama and Krishna who made sure you always came back by giving you a little extra menasinakayi or kottham bari soppu.

You would go for text books and notebooks to, M.S. Sons, L.N. & Co, V.S. & Sons, and for Kannada novels of Tha Ra Su, Aa Na Kru, Thriveni, Basavaraja Kattimane to G.K. Bros (Kalliah) opposite the chemist shop, Medico Surgicals.

Mostly people read B. Nagi Reddy’s Chandamama from Madras (Can you believe such a thing happening now?) and Balamitra before graduating to novels.

Basavanagudites were always ready for a  by-two coffee anytime, anywhere in hotels like Geetha Bhavan, a furlong from Gandhi Bazaar circle on the way to Ramakrishna Ashrama, Circle Lunch Home bang at the circle itself, Bhattara hotel in Nagasandra Road opposite Chandra Clinic run by Dr. Chandrashekar.

At night, most preferred badami haalu at Harsha Stores or Ganesha Stores with sweet bun or “congress” kadalekayi.

Come exam time, Ganeshana devasthana (now called Dodda Ganesha, not to be confused with the Karnataka cricketer) on Bull Temple road, next to Basavanagudi and opposite B.M.S. College would be so crowded with students praying for easy questions in their question papers, praying for a miracle when results would be out in a few days and praying for ‘seats’ in any of the engineering or medical colleges.

The only other time boys hovered around there was to catch sight of the beautiful girls who were always accompanied by a younger brother or sister in tow as some kind of ‘protection’!

You had National high school and Bangalore high school; but you also had Gurukulam where they taught you Amara, Bhagavad Gita and twitched your ears if you erred during recitation.

Abalashrama near Gurukulam looked after destitute girls and after giving education, married them off to eligible boys with the entire staff and inmates giving a tearful farewell to the new bride.

There were no malls those days. If you wanted pullangayi unde, kharada avalakkki or chakkali, you got it from Subbammana angadi on H.B. Samaja Road next to Hanumanthana devasthana. You would go to Grandige Angadi for most of your pooja material like sambhrani, oodh kaddi and karpoora.

You didn’t have Raymond’s, Peter England and Arrow shirts and pants then.

T-Shirt was not even heard of!

You went to Siddoji Rao & Sons to buy cotton pant and shirt pieces, and you gave them to Venkoba Rao at Reliable tailors or their brothers-in law at Elegance Tailors on Nagasandra Road. They would even call you for a trial marking the half-stitched dress with coloured chalks.

Later, after a wash you could get it pressed by a steaming iron box with burning charcoal inside!

You would buy Bata shoes or Flex ‘Pathan shoes’ worn without socks. There were no bewildering makes and certainly not jogging/ walking shoes. I doubt whether the word jogging existed then! You just walked barefoot or walked with whatever you wore. That’s it.

Basavanagudi and Gandhi Bazaar are really the grandparents of Koramangala, Padmanabha nagara, Basaveshwara nagara, Rajarajeshwari nagara, etc.

If you want to get a whiff of the old charm of Bangalore, the quintessence of Bangalore, you will still find it there!

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Once upon a time, on route number 11

Once upon a time, when the gari did not put mari

Visitors catch a few winks at the ground floor of the Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Right to rest should be a fundamental right—I

Right to rest should be a fundamental right—II

“As Hindus make up 80 per cent of the country’s population, the threat of Hindu fundamentalism is also as real as the minority backlash. But the greatest internal security threat is perhaps Left wing extremism.”

The ten political and social challenges that India has to deal with, according to author-historian Ramachandra Guha, speaking at a seminar organised by the Aspen Institute in Delhi:

1. Left wing extremism

2. Religious extremism

3. Corrupt centre

4. Decline of public institutions

5. Growing gap between rich and poor

6. Environment degradation

7. Political fragmentation of electoral system

8. Unreconciled borders

9. Unstable neighbourhoods

10. Apathy of the media

Read the full article: 10 things holding India back

Also read: Nandan Nilekani: the six things that changed India

Link courtesy Anand V.

Arun Shourie, the BJP’s resident intellectual for all matters requiring “an IQ of more than 60“—in the famous words of P. Chidambaram, presumably the Congress’s resident intellectual for all matters requiring an IQ of less than 600—has a piece in today’s Indian Express on the debacle of the BJP in the 2009 general elections.

The Magsaysay Award winning journalist, who has emerged as the third man in the dissident triangle after Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, strikes the grand posture of speaking for all the parties but leaves little doubt over why the L.K. Advani-Arun Jaitley camp has begun to distrust him as to sideline him along with the other two.

“The factor most responsible for the rout has been the state to which the leader and his circle have reduced the party as an organisation, but that is the one factor which the leader and his cohorts will not admit into the discourse. Is the party seen as, is it in fact different from the others? Are its candidates any different? Is every unit of the party not riddled with factionalism?

“That these are the reasons for the setback is manifest to all. But the leader and his circle would have none of them — for that would immediately raise further questions. The party is no longer different from others? Who has allowed the party to sink to this level where it cannot be distinguished from the very parties it has been denouncing? The candidates are no better than those of the rivals? Who has selected the candidates? Factionalism has been allowed to continue? Each state faction has a line to some ringleader in the central cabal? Who has allowed the factionalism to fester and swell?

“They blame others — the rival party; the third party that has stolen their vote; the accidental reason on account of which a section whose vote was to have split got consolidated; the youth; the middle class; the poor who voted on money, the rich who did not vote; the holidays on account of which so many went out of town; the disenchantment with the party’s ally in one state, the absence of an ally in the other; the anti-incumbency factor against us in this state, the advantage that the rival party had in the adjacent state of being in office and thereby being able to use the state machinery; the ‘shameless’ use of money and muscle by the rival… In a word, everyone and everything other than themselves.”

Read the full article here: On the way down

Also read: Don’t laugh: Do journalists make good politicians?

‘Only a vertical split can save the BJP’

The only person to blame for BJP loss is L.K. Advani

GAUTAMADITYA SRIDHARA writes from Bangalore: In October last year, churumuri.com published a story by MiD-DaY Bangalore editor S.R. Ramakrishna titled ‘By-two badam haal for the lambu leggie, please‘.

The article had a picture of the famous ‘Iyengars Bakery’ in 4th Block, Jayanagar although the bakery had been shut for a couple of years after the owners had decided to call it quits.

I met the gentleman who owned the bakery a couple of days ago and he explained to me that there was overwhelming “public demand” that the bakery be reopened and requests that “the owners not be responsible for erasing an integral part of old Jayanagar”.

Owing to public demand, I am happy to report that Iyengar’s Bakery reopened last Friday, 10 July 2009, to welcome many excited patrons including me.