The Malayalee bakery phenomenon in Bangalore

 

Something I wanted to write down earlier, but kept postponing. Nothing important, just something I thought some might find interesting.

So I have been in living in Bangalore for 4 years now. The 2014 football/soccer World Cup is round the corner, and I remember I watched the matches of the last World Cup in 2010 on stolen Wifi leaking from my neighbors ! I moved to Bangalore in January 2010, and have loved living in the city ever since. Hailing from Kerala, its always nice to see such a lot of our Mallu population in the city. But one funny thing that stood out was that I see a lot of Mallu folks at the City’s numerous bakeries.

In the last 4 years, all the bakeries I have visited in the city belonged to/were run by people from Kerala.

Now I live close to South Bangalore, but I have visited other parts of the city as well. Every time I wanted to get a quick bite, I would look for the nearest bakery. Now these bakeries, most of the time, do not actually bake their own products. They rely on third party vendors/suppliers , and serve tea and coffee, sometimes fresh juice. The fact was, I could confidently walk into any of these numerous corner outlets and talk to the guy behind the counter in my mother tongue of Malayalam.

Me: “Chetta, oru chaaya.” (Brother, one tea).

Immediately the rest of the conversation would start flowing, in somewhat the following style:

Bakery guy: “Oh, malayalee aano ? Evideya naadu”

Me: “Njaan Thrissur ninna. Ningalokke evide ninna ?”

Bakery guy: “Oh njangal Kozhikode/Malappuram/Kazarkode/Wayanad ninna. Nalla parippuvada/pazhamporee/egg puffs/cutlet undu. Onnu edukkatee ?”

If you don’t understand Malayalam, those lines above were damn hilarious.

But, jokes apart, its curious to see that this incident repeats itself whenever I walk into any bakery in the city. I tell this to most of my Kerala friends arriving in the city, and at first they laugh, and later concur they saw the same. I tell them: “If you are lost in the city, walk to the nearest bakery to ask for directions”. I haven’t seen the same pattern from people from any other state.

When I went to Hyderabad, I tried to test this theory there too. But, alas, I failed. The bakery I walked into was pure Andra owned !