About fifty-odd men, all with grey hair and receding hairlines, stand in and around the coffee room, sipping aromatic coffee from identical white cups. Outside, on the pavement, a hawker sets up his wares — handkerchiefs, nail-cutters, combs, lighters, wristwatches. Diagonally opposite him is a newspaper vendor already doing brisk business. The flower seller is here too, with his basket loaded with fresh and fragrant venis. It is only 6.40 a.m., but the day has long begun at MTR, Bangalore’s most iconic tiffin room.
Nostalgia fills my heart as I enter the building, wondering what might have changed since my last visit. The only change I notice, however, is the empty waiting room; during all my previous visits, the large hall had been swarming with people and the queues sometimes spilt well into the staircase.
MTR, like many other iconic institutions, is as much about the experience as it is about the food. I happened to discover this on a warm afternoon many years ago, when my husband and I tried walking into the café for lunch, not knowing what the place meant to a true-blue Bangalorean, and how almost the entire town congregated here for lunch on weekends. The long wait in the sun had taught us the lesson, and since then, we always reached well before opening time.
By that standard, I am late today, but am lucky enough to find my favourite table vacant.
What strikes you first about MTR is its simplicity. The tables are basic, the chairs are plastic and, other than a couple of old, discoloured pictures and a shelf full of white coffee cups, there is nothing that you can classify as décor. Yet, it has far more character than many five-star hotels would.
A familiar waiter, dressed in a red-and-white striped shirt and a white dhoti, walks up to me a few minutes later, and rattles off the menu for the day; menu cards find no place here. I give him my order and look around.
If there is one word you can associate MTR with, it is leisure: the fans whizz languidly even as regulars sip strong — and often sweet — coffee, amidst lively banter. Peals of laughter emanate from some tables, while some seat the lone hungry soul watching the world eat and drink. Even the waiters here have leisure writ in their demeanour. They are efficient, but never hurried or flustered, not even on the busiest of days, when they run incessantly from the ground floor kitchen to the first floor dining hall, carrying up to half a dozen orders at one go.
My order arrives soon. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside and served with a generous helping of spicy coconut chutney and a tiny potion of ghee, in my opinion, the dosas here can beat any other in the country, hands down. The secret to the texture and taste, I suspect, is the same languidness that serenades the air. I am tempted to ask for the coffee too, but resist. Like a proper South Indian, I want to enjoy my food first and coffee later.
I am only halfway through the dosa, when the waiter brings the vada. I suspect my ability to finish it, but take it nonetheless: who knows when I will get to taste it next?
Nibbling on my vada and scribbling on the soft paper napkins, I think of the many mornings I have spent at MTR and the long walks at Lal Bagh afterwards. Those breezy mornings have always defined Bangalore for me. Lost in my thoughts, I am caught smiling by a woman at the table next to mine. “Are you a photographer?” she asks, looking at my camera and my notes. In a matter of minutes, we are not only sharing the table, but also talking like long-lost buddies.
Befriending strangers, after all, is another quintessential MTR experience.
