The Hindu Business Line : Food for thought

AT 8 a.m., Santosh Hegde is the first to walk into our office and works till 6.30 p.m., serving food and drinks to journalists and non-journalists, with a pleasurable dash of promptness. He along with Taranath Rai man the canteen, with food coming from outside.

A year ago, Santosh left his Rengale village near the temple town of Udipi for Mumbai, though at 17 he is quite seasoned but shy. Ask any question and he prefers to lapse into himself with an uncertain smile suggesting politeness. "Why did you leave your village so early," one asked Santosh and he replied, "To study." At V.T. near Capital cinema, he regularly attends night school from around 7.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. and is in Class 9. He lives with his friends in a canteen at V.T., earns Rs 1,000 a month and sends Rs 500 home where his father tills land. His sister is married while the elder brother, who works in a hotel near Sterling Cinema, brought him to Mumbai.

Some mornings, when he gets time, he visits the temple of Lord Shani near Fort and that could be because someone would have told him that he was passing through a bad patch or Shani dasa. "Fear of gods are breathed into us; to keep alive prayers, priests and gods," says a friend of mine, and Lord Shani is one from whom anyone would like to keep off. On Sundays, Santosh plays cricket at the Azad Maidan to forget his home and village. "Whenever I see Santosh, I am reminded of my brother," says friend Archana, getting a bit emotional. The lady has a point as leaving one's village early in life, for a long toil, mostly alone, in a city, can be hurting. Faces of one's parents, sisters and brothers populate spare moments and offer a soft zone to keep away from the harshness outside.

Udipi hotels, next to the railway locals, are the most visible and enduring reference points in Mumbai for an ordinary migrant. Till today, no scholar has thought of chronicling the evolution of the Udipi hotel without which a Mumbaikar will have to go hungry and the city lose a way of living. For a while, George Fernandes took up the cause of the Kannada boys brought in by the owners and it stopped there. The Shetty owners are not known for common decencies and the city has no union for those employed in these places.

Experts on food have given little space to the staple food an Udipi hotel provides: vada or idli sambar, the limited thali or the unlimited thali. The Udipi sambar, unlike the Tamil version, is sweetish and the Tamilian vada is different from what the Shetty, who generally owns the Udipi hotel, offers; the restricted thali offers a few dishes with no helpings while only a few go for unrestricted thali, as it is too much on the digestive system.

All Udipi eateries taste the same, a point which my friend Nagu contests; they offer quick service which the Taj and Oberoi may find difficult to match or emulate. The dishes carry a bit of sugar and does not offer the sharp thrills of a Tamil or Andhra serving.

The Udipi invasion can be dated to the 1940s with the first shops coming up in Fort and Matunga; Nagu carries with him the history of some of the old joints in Fort. At some point of time, they drove out the Maharashtrian restaurants to Dadar and, when the city expanded to Nariman Point ,were in with the first eateries. From Mumbai, they took the Mumbai-Pune Express to take over Pune.

In recent years, a large number of Udipi hotels have poorly lighted bars attached to their eating places though vada-sambar does not go well with liquor, whose quality again is suspect. A regular client strikes friendships with particular attenders and this writer knew well a young fellow who worked in Vihar hotel, near our office. He stayed in Malad and the last time one met him on the local train, he talked of going back to Mangalore.

Taranath Rai comes from a village near Kasargode, on the Kerala-Karnataka border. "Saab, Anil Kumble comes from a village near ours," says Taranath, who came to Mumbai when he was 13 and is now 21 years old. He checks into the office canteen at about 9.30 a.m. and stays on till about 8 p.m. His uncles run hotels in the suburbs but he prefers to stay away from them. He earns a salary of Rs 1,200 per month and sends some money home to help his two brothers and sisters. He has studied till Class 7 and never thought of enrolling for night classes. "Abhi, kya karoge (What are you going to do now)," one asked Taranath and he said replied, "Ooparwale ke hath mein hai (It is in God's hands)."

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