It was one of those noisy evenings in the TCI1 cafeteria. The PGET trio of analysis team - Myself, Panky and Pandyan reached there 5 mins past the snacks time. Now for the information of those who are not from TCI, 'snacks time' starts at sharp 5 pm in the cafeteria, it was the perfect time to take the break from the busy work schedules and chill out in the cafeteria. and a good number of the employees used to turn up well ahead of time. . We were late because we could be in for the queues so big that could go all the way into the training room outside. And surely there was one big queue at the popular snacks counter, it was samosa chat there. Panky and Pandyan joined the line. However i was not in a mood to wait that day, i decided to try the parallel counter which surprisingly had only a handful of customers. I decided to take a look, and then I saw the dish in the tray. It was something partially fried, i was wondering, what the hell, and there was the display panel with one of the weirdest of names IDLI MANCHURIAN! Now all i felt like saying was 'Take a bow chef, take a bow'. Not for the dish being tasty, wonder how many dared to touch that. But this was innovation of the highest order something like disruptive innovation. A fusion of unthinkable proportions - orientalisation of the very popular south indian breakfast dish in some cooking lab in Pune (that is what we should call it), globalisation has left its mark on the cafeteria as well. The cafeteria has done its bit to promote cultural diversity with those chicken curries with names relating to locales from Kanyakumari to Kashmir . But now, they have raised the bar.
Pity the poor souls who were drawn by the samosa chat or the dosa counter. They missed something which they will probably never see again. Now all of us talk big about the innovation, now here was some serious innovation on a platter. Too bad, the innovation day closed shop months back, else this rare delicacy would have been the talk of the tower! The caterer also has to lauded for this idea of value maximisation, an idea that has changed the fate of leftover idlis from the morning into something which was outta the world. Idli manchurian did dominate our discussion after the snacks, when we took the walk on the balcony. On that day, it stole the attention from MB, the tall one, akka and ofcourse 'the rat in the attic'. Maybe it was a conscious move from the heavens to enrich us with the right food to brew up those innovative thoughts in our gray matter.
Still remember that evening in the cafe,
When i stepped out of the samosa queue way,
To have a peep at the new comer in the snacks tray,
those golden fried and crisp looking lumps,
with the name which could give anyone goosebumps,
IDLI Manchurian!!
dude...nice one ..though more blog entries are expected from you as you are already too late from the time we discussed that you should be blogging .....well better late than never applies here.....way to go mann!
ReplyDeletethanks bro, yeah it is late, i wrote this when i finally got some time
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