A Little Green Haven Called Patel’s Inn 

I sometimes work (or try to) out of a place near my home called Patel’s Inn & Club.

Of course, it’s more club than inn – it’s got a swimming pool, one of Bengaluru’s oldest go-karting tracks, a little football-coaching field, a cute pub with a pool table, a restaurant and, of late, a pickleball court. 

The day I first walked into the place, I knew I’d stumbled upon RT Nagar’s best-kept secret. Right in the midst of densely populated RT Nagar here was 4 – 5 acres densely populated with tall trees, exotic plants and flowers. 

They even have a species called Raat Ki Rani (known rather unfairly in English by the phrase usually used for streetwalkers – ‘Lady of the Night’). Its clusters of tiny white flowers bloom only at night, infusing the air with a rich, heady perfume.

I fell in love with the place at first sight. Or my first visit. Or the first whiff of Raat Ki Rani.

I began going there so often that the waiters thought I was a member of the club and started to give me the customary 10% Members’ discounts on my bills. By the time they discovered I wasn’t a member, I’d become a friend of the eponymous owner, Ramesh Patel, and would often be seen at his table. So now I get a Special Member’s discount of 20%. 

Like most of our beautiful country, RT Nagar is a study in contradictions. Parts of it have buildings piled atop one another like a Tetris game gone horribly wrong. The other end has fine bungalows in which dwell our corrupt friends – politicians. This is called the MPs’ Colony. Next to them live their ‘brothers from another mother’ in what’s called the Judges’ Colony. Among all of them – the lawbreakers (the politicians) and their good friends, the lawmakers (the judges) and the Tetris class, Patel’s Inn manages to have a large and loyal clientele. 

I started by saying that I ‘try’ to work out of this place because working here is often not that easy. Beer, of course, is a huge distraction. So is the sheer beauty. Green leaves on the tall trees flutter incessantly in the teasing wind. Strange, beautiful, and unidentifiable birds hover atop the bushes. Raindrops hurry from the clouds down to the cobbled ground, which glistens with increasing wetness till it’s a tiny, shiny pool of water. A cat contracts its body under a table, wary of the cascading stream. The wet flowers nod happily in the pouring rain. 

Not exactly ideal conditions for work. 

But what a thing it is for the soul.