BREAKFAST WITH ROSE MILK

They say breakfast should be eaten like a king. Then the Karpagambal Mess in Mylapore, opposite the Kapaleeshwaran Temple, is the place to be in for the most easy on the stomach and purse. And I speak with such confidence because I am vegetarian and I love my familiar breakfast in the radius of idli and dosai and all things made of rice and steamed.
I can drool over an aaloo parantha or a hot buttered toast with equal passion, but consistent emotions are reserved for the essential South Indian breakfast.
Mylapore is at the core of the Tamil Brahmin culture of Madras (don't mind if I call it by the old familiar name. That way I am quite sentimental).
While it is also the oldest settlements, it can also be equally claustrophobic, with it's cheek by jowl buildings, with not much of natural lighting or any form of ventilation. Some new structures are coming up, even as streaks of modernity (read Western) juxtapose with the very, very traditional.
While there are many other well known eating houses nearby including the famous Rayar's cafe, the Karpagambal Mess still holds top place. It is dirty, the old worldly charm entirely lost in its messy look, slightly resentful but quick waiters and it's overall tired and a blah, we've-been-there look.
I have been visiting the place for a long time now and remember a small and crowded place with bell jars at the billing counter and you could actually buy a murrukku Or a kadalai urundai by the piece. And then when I set up home, I would take great pride in buying podis and pickles and applams.
Now there is an uninformed person sitting at the desk and the podi counter stands in a dusty and forgotten corner of this incredibly small place.
Today's special item was vendiya dosai, while I hard crashed on a hot vadai sambar. The next table asked for puri kazhangu and driver Giri had a masal dosai.
This small place was also famous because they would serve addai aviyal (provided you reached early enough which could be between 6 am to 7.30 am or 4 pm), a super combination and a treat. Since the world by then had become aware of health benefits, the addais were enhanced with moringa leaves and a fistful of them added to the avial too.
While people down South have been using moringa leaves for ages, it is wearing a new look of panaecea in the recent times.
Items like sevai, adai-avial, thavala adai are all being served at high end eating places like Paati Veedu, their USP being 'traditional items at a cost.'
Whereas the Karpagambal Mess would be more reasonable if you seriously don't mind the 'slumming'. Their lunches are also much celebrated, for its homely touch.
Typically it is a mess, serving a wholesome meal to the bachelor, who misses a plentiful home cooked food. They were also famous for their pineapple rasam, normally found only in a shaadi meal and other special items like usili.
Now they cater to all meals and are as popular. The sambhar is delicious and seriously there are no complaints about the food items, though most special items were unavailable, but then a typical dosai or a vadai-sambar can never go wrong. A meal to be completed with a strong coffee off a dawara tumbler. We did not have kaapi since the mood of adventure prevailed and we thought we'd try out the Kalathi Rose Milk,
In my earlier avaatar I had travelled to Chennai to do a couple of such record breaking stories and one among them was the Kalathi Rose Milk Shop, but the day I called Mr Mani, Kapaleeshwaran temple was agog with festivities and he discouraged me from coming. Soon the opportunity did not arise, though I spoke to him over the phone.
This shop is innocuous, though on the turning of this delectable Temple Tank Road (it must have other names). Surrounded by a couple of trees, dust bins and a few dead cockroaches, its new board is fairly attractive.
It was way too early when we went to have our first rose milk from this shop. Memories of childhood gathered immediately even as the small plastic bottle of 200 ml of pink goodness just went down the gullet in a flash. ( incidentally many Tamilians will recognise the colour pink as rose. I find that endearing).
They serve it only in these bottles and you can also buy a bottle of the house syrup to make many more tall glasses of this delicious drink. They say 300.
The taste has been consistent for the past 90 odd years.
Kalathi Rose Milk Shop started as a small newspaper shop by Kalathi Mudhaliyar in 1927. And those days the rose milk was served in glasses and would cost 25 paise. K Mani, a retired bank manager  now runs it, but was not available that early, though the bottles were being filled and packed for the day's visitors.
Since there is a music Hall down the road, there are a number of actors who have visited the place, including Crazy Mohan and Shivaji Ganesan and several other famous people.
Muruganandam was filling up the bottles at high speed and since he has been here for 25 years, the speed is a given.
A young girl Sangeeta had come after attending her swimming lessons. Her mother Jayashree said that this trip was a haunt whenever they went swimming.
80 ltrs of milk on one day (summers would be slightly more) to keep several generations in thrall keeps this shop in the pink of health.