This must rank as one of the most attractive ways of presenting a bill of fare. It's lunchtime on a typically muggy late-September day in Chennai and I am at the oldest outlet-there are half-a-dozen-odd scattered around Chennai-of Sri Velu Military Hotel. If you're gourmand enough to appreciate even the sight of food, you'll approve of the ordering process at establishments such as Velu. Smart lunchers order the basic meal-sappadu it is called in the local lingo, although the restaurant insists on refering to it as a 'limited meals' (note the plural), and in Velu's case, it is a huge bowl of steamed rice, two vegetables, one dry, the other not so, and three kinds of gravy, one chicken, one mutton, and the third, fish-and wait for the predictable query.

Sure enough, the waiter asks, "Side-dish?" "What's there?" I parry, knowing fully well that a boring printed menu will not be proferred. It isn't. "One minute," says the waiter and moves purposefully towards a sideboard that will not win any awards for aesthetics of design. He returns carrying a steel plate that must measure at least 40 inches along its diameter and thrusts it under my nose. The plate is laden with small steel dishes (these must measure between six and eight inches along the diameter, and yes, if you must know, I did study engineering) containing every kind of meat known to man and then some, all except pork and beef.

"Country chicken, whole fried crab, chicken pepper fry, mutton pepper fry, fried fish, fish curry, rabbit fry..." the waiter rattles on in a sing-song voice. His voice fades into insignificance. So does the ambience. For a few delicious seconds, there's just me and the meats on display, a private communion of the worshipper and the worshipped. "I'll have the crab and the rabbit," I say.

Chennai's Own

The exact origin of the term 'military hotel' isn't clear, although it is likely that it owes its origin to the popular perception, in this part of the country, of the military as a earthy, hard-drinking, hard-eating (and mostly meat at that) kind of organisation. V. Ganesan, one of the three brothers who run Ponnusamy, arguably the finest chain-there are five Ponnusamys across the city-of this genre in Chennai would like to think that the militariness also distinguishes the cuisine of the kind on offer from another that is indigenous to this part of the country, Chettinadu. Chettinadu cuisine has become popular across the country. Military cuisine remains restricted to Chennai, its environs, and other parts of Tamil Nadu.

Still, make no mistake, this is the taste of the state. Lucknow has its kebabs, Bangalore, its rave idlis and karabath (served up hot at the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms) and set dosas and idlis on offer at its ubiquitous darshinis, Mumbai its vada pau and baida roti, street food of the kind you'll find nowhere else in India, and Chennai, its brain masala, rabbit fry, and meen kozhumbu. That may surprise most Indians living north of the Vindhyas who believe Chennai to be in the heart of the idli-dosa-sambhar-rasam-curd rice belt. It will not surprise the statisticians: Tamil Nadu boasts the highest per capita consumption of fish and chicken in the country.

And it will not surprise sociologists. There's a fairly straightforward link between cuisine and culture. New England hauteur and gentility feed, and feed off, a cuisine where food that is marginally over salted is considered spicy. Closer home, Punjabi exuberance and love of all things ostentatious is, at once a cause and an effect, of a cuisine with a predisposition to richness. In this part of the country: swarthiness and moustaches are considered the height of manliness; beauty, in a woman, is synonymous with buxomness; the dance of the masses, the dabban kuthu, is a more vigorous, and openly sexual version of the salsa; and brandy is the liquor of choice (the heat be damned) although whisky and rum are popular too. Did someone say military?

A Rare Thing

Ganesan is loath to shed information on the spices that make Ponnusamy's cuisine distinct. "That'll be a giveaway," he laughs. All he's willing to say is that "the masala that goes into each one of our dishes is different" and that all Ponnusamy's cooks come from "Karaikudi side", an area in the dry hinterland of Tamil Nadu.

Ganesan's cageyness is justified. Ponnusamy was founded by his father, Velu Pillai, in 1952 and it has grown into an institution that feeds, on an average, 2,500 people on weekdays, and double that on weekends. Ganesan shares the numbers reluctantly; "I shall not tell you the turnover," he says. Still, assuming an average bill size of Rs 50, Ponnusamy should earn revenues of around Rs 6 crore.

To practised taste buds, the appeal of military cuisine lies in its liberal use of basic spices, the fact that all meat is overcooked, but only just, and the range. There's chicken, turkey, and nattu kozhi, free range reared chicken. There are several kinds of fish, including, during the season, fresh fish, and anchovies. There's rabbit and mutton (and whispers, and only those, of venison, if you know the right people). There's crab and prawn. And there's the kind of stuff you certainly will not find anywhere else: brain masala, kidney curry, even, in some restaurants only, goat blood, collected, stood in, and sauteed with spices. Then, there's what local restaurateers refer to as 'variety': Ponnusamy, for instance, dishes out mutton in 15 different ways. Some of the meat on offer is rare, and I don't mean underdone.

The Japanese quail is almost a protected species and most military hotels in Chennai source it from the city's sole licensed supplier of the meat. And even the rabbits come from licensed suppliers. Chennai's always had a thing for rare meats. This writer remembers stealing out of home at the crack of dawn some 20 years ago to feast on omelettes made from sea turtle eggs (he discovered the environmental faux pas later). The military hotels do not serve turtle meat, but rest assured, if they could, they would.

Finger Foods

The times may be catching up with military cuisine. Ganesan is considering expanding to Malaysia and, later, a possible diversification into military fast food. And cutlery is making its presence felt in military hotels, although you still have to ask for it; yet, crab-pliers are almost unknown, as are fish knives. As for bibs of the type the more fancy seafood restaurants provide, forget it. Military meats are best eaten with prodigious quantities of rice. Most hotels now serve various kinds of South Indian breads, but the spicy meats go best with steamed rice. And they are best eaten by hand. At lunch in Ponnusamy's one afternoon not too long after my experience at Velu's, I saw two young tie-clad executives at the next table negotiate two large carapaced crabs with their fingers, without breaking into a sweat or getting any of the crab on their ties, all the while maintaining a steady pratter about quality audits. "It's hard to match the appeal of freshly prepared meat," says Ganesan, who claims that anyone who is anyone in Chennai is a Ponnusamy regular. "The stars eat at our Vadapalani branch," he adds, referring to a Chennai borough that houses several motion picture studios.

Kollywood, as the Tamil film industry is known, has a predilection for creating the celluloid equivalent of military cuisine. That, though, is subject for another story. Praise the lord and pass the batter-fried anchovies.

TREADMILL

JOGGERS' TROUBLES I've been accused-by some non-gymmers, if you must know-of making Treadmill a weight-training tip sheet and not talking about other fitness issues. Well, I'll hold in abeyance my opinion on what I think of those people but here's something that may change their view. This is about a common peril that can befall joggers. People who depend on jogging for their physical well-being (and that breed is mushrooming) can be risking one of the most common injuries-the jogger's knee. With every step you take, the knee-cap (patella) slides up a cartilage-lined groove in the femur. But with the constant pressure of jogging, the patella can get dislodged, leading it to grind against the femur. Yes, jogger's knee can be painful. Fortunately, you can prevent it from happening. First off, joggers must realise that while jogging is a great cardio-vascular exercise, jogging alone can't guarantee you strong legs and the stronger your legs are the less likely you'll suffer from the ailment. Jogging works the quads or quadriceps (the muscles in the front of your thigh) more than it does your hamstrings (the ones at the back). If you're jogging and not doing anything else for your legs, it could result in imbalances and hence injuries. So the ideal thing is to complement jogging with exercises like hamstring curls, leg extensions and the sumo squat. The sumo squat is a squat where your legs are in the position of a sumo wrestler's stance. What it does is to strengthen the vastus medialis (the muscles on the inner side of the knee that holds the kneecap). I'd recommend doing three sets of 10 reps of each of these three exercises. Twice a week. And then jog as much as you want. Tip of the fortnight: And here's something more for my non-gymming critics. The push-up. When was the last time you did the plain old push-up? You know, the one-go down on your hands, legs stretched, back straight and in line with your butt. Well, if you thought the push-up was old-fashioned, listen up. While bench-pressing may strengthen your chest and shoulder muscles, the muscles behind them-the scapular and rotator cuff muscles-aren't worked by benching. So add a couple of sets of push-ups to your workout routine to complete your upper body workout. You'll be better balanced. -MUSCLES MANI