The first of November is a good day to be in Bangalore... Its the Karnataka Rajyostav Diwas... 5o years ago, the Kannada speaking territories were united into the Mysore state (later renamed as Karnataka)... this marks a special occasion for all the people out here and it was amply evident from the yellow and red stripes of the Karnataka flag, proudly displayed on most auto-rikshaws and in shops... It was wonderful to watch the upbeat mood on the roads and to add to it, we had a holiday today!! God, how great it feels to have a holiday on wednesday!
This being a special day for us (and the rest of Karnataka); we got the idea of making it truly memorable... and memorable it was!!
For the first time after coming to bangalore, we took to the kitchen and decided that it was time that we had some home-made food... :P
So began the enthusiasm to make rotis at home (fostered by ravi having a roti-maker with him)... We started off with gathering the necessary apparatus and ingredients for our experiment with Dasu acting as the Head Chef... He was the only one amongst us four (the other two being Nagota and Ravi) who had prior experience cooking rotis... So after a brief interview he was recruited as Head Chef by the rest of us....:D
Thus began this adventurous experiment; as Dasu started preparing the dough (and having a tough time getting the right proportion of dough and water :P) and I placed the first roti to be made in the roti-maker. We were expecting the top plate of the roti maker to rise on its own when the roti was cooked but that was not to be.. After some more speculation we thought about finding out for ourselves what had happened to our first roti.. and that was when we realized that it had changed color to dark brown and was as hard as wood.. but nevertheless, we made an effort to taste it and also found that it was delicious! We concluded that we had made a food product never before envisioned by humanity and proudly named it as the Great Indian Pie.
We were so thrilled by our invention that we took a video of the same and also made plans for having a startup in this area. But first, we will have to go ahead and patent this product so that no others can steal our innovation. After trying a couple of more times to make the more conventional roti, we concluded that there was something wrong with the roti maker and we would rather use the cooking gas to make our tandoori rotis. And we succeeded at that! Within an hour, we had made 16 world class tandoori rotis which could easily replace the ones served in most of the restaurants in Bangalore. Though we had a tough time maintaining the circular geometry of the roti, we thought that not making it circular was another innovation and we could actually make irregularly shaped rotis and popularize it as a fashion (the customers in the restuarants would find it thrilling to guess how the roti that they would be served would look like!!)
So, after one hour of dedicated effort and after making rajma and dal fry, we were ready to have our first home-made dinner in Bangalore. We also had some sweets to celebrate our triumph. And of course, it was one of the most filling and satiating dinner we ever had! Soon, our food chain would take over every corner of every city and town in India and that is when our talent would truly achieve the recognition it deserves...
The video of our achievement could be viewed on google video (I cannot post the link here since I am writing this from office and I am unable to open any email from here..) by searching for The Great Indian Pie in the genre Art and Entertainment.
Cast: Sabby (that's me), Dasu.
Special Fx: Nagota.
Behind the lens: Ravi.
So sit back and enjoy!
