Sri Lankan Restaurant Praba In South Harrow - For Moreish Masala Dosai, Apams (hoppers) and More

Colourful Sir Lankan restaurant, Praba, In South Harrow

The Praba Sri Lankan restaurant is within walking distance of South Harrow station and bus garage.  It is just before the South Harrow Baptist church. The area looks rather downmarket compared to Harrow On the Hill and other areas, but inside the restaurant it is quite elegant but reasonably priced. The name Praba comes from the sanskrit word for light, radiance, luminance splendour. Does the restaurant live up to its name?

Dancing Light Decor

Praba restaurant's overhead lights changing colour. Photos by Angela Lansbury.

Central ceiling decoration, changing colour. Momentarily disconcerting, even irritating. Then intriguing, interesting, attractive. Finally, forgotten when your food arrives. Meanwhile, look around.

The toilet is downstairs. Handy for those who hate stairs and saves time.

Indoor stairs lead upstairs. What is up there, we wondered.

Angela with masala dosai.

Masala Dosai

 I ordered masala dosai. A huge 'pancake'. Filled with potato. 

Dips

Served on a wide metal tray, like a thali, with three dips. White - yogurt and something? Red - tomato based? Darker red - spicy - red pepper?

Leftovers

When I asked for my leftover food to be packed up to take away, they gave me a round transparent box with a lid. I like to pack my leftovers. 

Later I commented to my husband, 'No risk of them forgetting and throwing it away. Or giving you the meal with missing items. No need to worry your food might have got contaminated.' (My husband says to me, drily, 'You can find something else to worry about.')

Service

The service was obliging although a bit erratic. They happily allowed three of us to all pay separately. They also said a group of us could come in after a meeting ended at 10 pm and order just drinks or desserts (having eaten earlier). And they were happy to let me take away the leftovers.

The menu could do with more translation. Apam is a thin pancake cooked and served in a bowl. An apam is also called a hopper.

The waiter got confused and gave one of my dishes, coconut apam, to another person who had three apam oreos. (A thin dessert pancake made with a spread of American \Oreo biscuits, which seemed very strange, but my club's President, who is Asian, ordered three of the Oreo Apams.) So my friend got to pay for something extra. And I was not able to try out the dish which was new to me.

They were out of mango for mango lassi and could offer only sweet or salted lassi. So one of my friends ordered the sweet lassi instead. 

I shall definitely go back. I loved the masala dosai. It was just right for me. Soft like a pancake. Not overcooked to a brittle crisp.  

Leftovers Next Day

I had taken home the spicy dip which I had hardly touched.  It was still too spicy, especially without the large helping of bland potato which I had had in the restaurant. So, at home, I added two tablespoons of yogurt to cool down the effect.

The test is, will I go back? Yes. I hope to try an apam. To get mango lassi. I might indulge in my family's favourite, gulab jamun (known to us from Tandoori restaurants which feature the cuisine of northern India.) 

Getting There

South Harrow is on the H12 bus route from Stanmore via Hatch End, and Rayners Lane.

South Harrow station is on the Piccadilly line.

Useful Websites About Praba Restaurant and Sri Lankan Food

https://www.prabarestaurant.co.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appam

https://lankawebsites.com/blog/culture-traditions/hoppers-appa-traditional-breakfast

Apam/hopper mix

https://koodai.co.uk/collections/drinks-tea-coffee-instant-mixes/products/elakkia-appam-instant-mix-1kg

https://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/mdk-easy-hopper-mix-appampancake-mix

Hopper cooking pan about £14 plus £4 or £5 postage from various sellers on ebay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226323175045?_skw=hopper+pan

Royal Gulab Jamun dessert from Tesco supermarket online £4

https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/

Travel to South Harrow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Harrow_tube_station

https://tfl.gov.uk/bus/stop/490G000752/south-harrow-bus-station/

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Learn Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Related Languages

 Tamil is spoken in Tamil Nadu in India. 

Tamil Nadu means Tamil country. The capital is Chennai, formerly called Madras..

Tamil is also spoken in Sri Lanka. 

Lanka means island. Sri means resplendent.

Sri Lanka previously was called Ceylon. You might still see Celonese tea. Twinings Tea company websites uses both words, 

Singapore

Tamil is additionally one of the four national languages of Singapore. Tamil is spoken in Little India, where you find shops and restaurants. Also in schools for those whose family language is Tamil.

Learning Tamil

I could not find Tamil in Duolingo. But I could find Hindi, and one of the Indian languages has learning English as an option.

Wikipedia has articles on the language and the countries and places mentioned. Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for each country.

Quora has interesting discussion on saying hello and goodbye in Tamil.

Wikivoyage has a phrasebook. They say that Tamil language is spoken by 74 million people. 

Tamil is closely related to Malayalam, and more distantly related to Kannada and Telugu. It is not related to the languages spoken in northern India, but like other Indian languages has been heavily influenced by Sanskrit.

What to see in Tamil Nadu

The capital city, Chennai, has beaches. 

Huge Hindu temples. The religion of the majority is Hindu.

What to see in Sri Lanka

The majority religion is Buddhist.

What to see in Singapore

1 Little India has small shops, and huge Mustafa's department store.

2  Restaurants serve meat or vegetarian dishes, and Singapore's speciality, fish head curry, with white rice on green banana leaves. The banana Leaf Appollo is one of many South Indian restaurants, many of which are vegetarian.

 Little India has a museum about Indian immigration to Singapore. very interesting and visitor friendly. For example, when I was there you could try on hats and take a selfie..

Useful Websites

Singapore Indian Museum

https://www.indianheritage.gov.sg/en

Tamil Language

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tamil_phrasebook

Sri Lankan Tea

https://twinings.co.uk/collections/sri-lankan-tea

The Maldives - an archipelago

The Maldives is an archipelago which means a group of islands. It is in Asia (south of Sri Lanka which is off the south of India.)  The capital is Mahe, on what is known as the king's island.

What to do

Submarine

Fishing

Island hopping

Museum

Friday mosque

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/10/lets-look-at-maldives.html

First steps in Tamil - easy words which sound the same

Official language in	Sri Lanka  Singapore  India: Tamil Nadu[3] Puducherry[4]  ASEAN[5]
Recognised minority language in	Malaysia[6]  Mauritius[7]  South Africa[

You already know and use a few Tamil words, catamaran, cheroot, curry, mango. I didn't realise these words were Tamil. I first knowingly came across Tamil in Singapore.

Where can you hear of speak Tamil?  You see Tamil on the MRT underground railway stations in Singapore and the train map. You also hear Tamil spoken in the station announcements. The English ends with the words thank you. The Tamil ends with nan(d)ri.

I came across a handy guide to Tamil which I had forgotten I had on my bookshelves. I was looking for words in Vietnamese and picked up the Foreign Workers and Domestic Helpers Language guide. I bought it in Mustaph's department store in Little India in Singapore.

The book contains the languages English, Chinese (Mandarin), Tamil and Bahasa Indonesia. (Indonesian is almost the same as Malay.) These are the four official languages in Singapore. The book also contains the languages of Myanmar and Bengali.

The Tamil language looks very pretty, with lovely curves. However, even the shortest word in English has many Tamil letters to recognize.

Nevertheless, this time I persisted. I glanced down the lists of words looking for whatever was easy.

1 I wanted those Tamil words which were only one syllable.
2 I was pleased with words which started with the same letter as the English word.
3 Best of all, words which looked and sounded almost the same.

I was rewarded. Here are my findings which I shall share with you.

The English letter b is often pronounced as p

The English g becomes k

Short one-syllable words in English often end in u making two syllables in Tamil
You might notice that Tamil speakers sometimes add the sound oo onto the end of English words.

Tamil - English sound
one - onru (like one-u)
eight - ettu (like eight-u)

one million - oru milliyan
one billion - oru billiyan

Like other languages
morning - kailai (like the Greek kali spera, good morning)

Words starting with the same letter or sounding similar
noon - nan-pakal

The months sound almost the same
b becomes (unvoiced) p in February
g becomes k (in August); c bcomes k in October

January - janavari
February - pipravari
march - maarch
April - eapral
May - mea
June - joon
July - joolai
August - aakast
September - chepdampar
October - aktopar
November - navampar
December - disampar

Words Which Are The Same
meter - meter

I looked up Tamil Language in Wikipedia. I learned:
Words of Tamil origin occur in other languages. A notable example of a word in worldwide use with Dravidian (not specifically Tamil) etymology is orange, via Sanskrit nāraṅga from a Dravidian predecessor of Tamil nartaṅkāy "fragrant fruit". One suggestion as to the origin of the word anaconda is the Tamil anaikkonda, "having killed an elephant". Examples in English include cheroot (churuṭṭu meaning "rolled up"), mango (from māngāi), mulligatawny (from miḷaku taṇṇīr, "pepper water"), pariah (from paraiyan), curry (from kari), catamaran (from kaṭṭu maram, "bundled logs"), and congee (from kanji – rice porridge or gruel).

Now I have started Tamil ready for my next visit to a Tamil toastmasters club in Singapore, to chat to Indians about language, or to visit India and read signs and calendars.


Flag of India

Useful Websites
translate google
www.mightyminds.sg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_loanwords_in_other_languages
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/06/first-steps-in-tamil-easy-words-which.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/06/tamil-sentence-structure.html
Tamil Bilingual speakers' club in Singapore
https://www.facebook.com/tlcsbilingualsingapore/

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a trave writer and phtographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a langauge evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President (2019-2020) of Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters International speakers' club, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL
Please join us.

I have many other blog posts on languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

What to see and savour in Sri Lanka: Cities, Buildings, Buddhas, Dosai and Tea!

Where is it?
Off south East India. The Indian Ocean is to the South. The Bay of Bengal is to the East.

Which are the major cities to visit?

The capital, Colombo, is on the West coast. Kandy is in the centre.

Travellers' Problem
What to see?
Is it safe?

Answers
What To See
Old buildings, new buildings, Buddhs and more Buddhas. Tea - the famous Ceylon tea.

Traditional Buildings

Building in Jaffa. Picture from Wikipedia.


UNESCO World Heritage Sites such as Kandy and Sigiriya.

National parks Minneriya and Yala .

Tea plantations such as Nuwara Eliya tea plantations.

The sandy bays of Ahangama.

Trips to Sigiriya rock fortress.

Trips to the ancient city of Polonnaruwa.

Buddhas
At least three major buddhas.


Food
Rice and curry.
Masala dosa (or dosai). Dosa means pancake.
String hopper.
Food might be served not on a china plate, nor the banana leaf of Little India in Singapore but a plantain leaf or lotus leaf.

Sri Lankan Restaurants In London
Central London and the suburbs have Sri Lankan restaurants.
Hoppers, Soho

Is Sri Lanks safe?
You might have heard about trouble.
Wikipedia says:
Colombo, 1983: The Black July, 400–3000 Tamil civilians were killed across the island in the anti-Tamil Pogrom allegedly backed by hard-line Sinhalese ministers.
Tamil Tigers bombed the sacred Sri Dalada Maligawa temple in 1998.

That was a while back. 

 A Sri Lankan friend from a Toastmasters Club in Singapore told me that the troubles are over.

Officially over?
That didn't stop gang warfare in London. A murder took place in a park in London. Imported feud. But if London is now as bad as the rest of the world, might as well travel.

What was that news story from the UK?
2003:
http://www.harrowtimes.co.uk/news/381882.Life_sentences_for_murder_gang/

Safety Advice
From the British Government

From the American Government

From the Canadian Government

Sri Lankan Restaurants In London, England
https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/11/where-can-you-find-authentic-sri-lankan-food-in-london-here-are-5-restaurants-to-check-out-7532055/
hoppers.london.com
Jaffna House Restaurant
www.lokhandwala.co.uk
Papaya Restaurant

Virundhu, 113 Field End Road, Eastcote, Pinner, HA5 1QG tel +44 (0)20 8866 7500
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g7380842-d12507013-r502299728-Virundhu-Pinner_Greater_London_England.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/sri-lankan-food-where-to-eat-it-and-how-to-make-it-hoppers-soho-london-review-moonstone-review-a7717251.html

Masala Dosa in Singapore
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4474319509042475984#allposts/postNum=1

Competition from Travelzoo for two weeks in Sri Lanka
Click on this link because that is supposed to give me a credit for referrring you.
https://wyng.io/gIrGyi

It is organized by Lumle Holidays. I checked them out on Tripadvisor and they had good reviews when I looked in July 2018.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on learning Tamil, Famous Tamil people, Masala Dosai in Singapore, vegetarian food in London. Please share links to your favourite pages.

Tamil loanwords used in English and easy first steps in Tamil

Kota Tinggi waterfalls In Malaysia, a popular trip from Singapore. The word Kota is from Tamil.

Signed Tamil
Official status
Official language in	Sri Lanka  Singapore  India: Tamil Nadu[3] Puducherry[4]
Recognised minority language in	Malaysia[5]  Mauritius[6]  South Africa[7

Where is Tamil spoken? It is easy to remember that Tamil is spoken in Tamil Nadu in India.
The Tamil language is an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore. In Singapore announcements on the trains are in the four official languages, English, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay (which is almost the same as Indonesian) and Tamil. Tamil is also used in countries and areas with large Tamil populations, such as parts of Malaysia and South Africa.

Story
On the train every day in Singapore I hear the English announcement ending with the word thank you, then the Tamil announcement ending with the word nandri. Now that I can recognize that, I am interested in learning more.

Problem
The Tamil language looks so strange and unrelated to English. If you type a word in English into Google translate, you get a translation in squiggly writing. How can I get over the psychological barrier and start learning it?

Answer
Start with a couple of words you already know.

I have extracted this information from a long complicated article in Wikipedia
Tamil Words Used in English
English  - original meaning in English
(For example in German and English kindergarten - comes from the German word child garden)

      Tamil Words Used in English

• cash - money
• catamaran - tied wood
• cheroot - roll
• Mulligatawny - pepper water
• patchouli - green leaf
• talent - natural aptitude

Knowing the origin of the word is handy. Now when I see Mulligatawny on a menu in an Indian restaurant I will know it is a spicy dish, something some friends will love, but which I will avoid!

Tamil Words Used in Malay and Indonesian (which are the same languages with a few variations in vocabulary, a bit like British English and American English)
Kota - fort (also town or city) as K o t a  B h a r u, Kota T i n g g i, Kota  K e m u n n g

Kota K i  n a b u l a in Malaysia

Kota Kinabalu is named after Mount Kinabalu, which is situated about 50 kilometres east-northeast of the city. Kinabaluis derived from the name Aki Nabalu meaning the "revered place of the dead." Aki means "ancestors" or "grandfather", and Nabalu is a name for the mountain in the Dusun language.^[10] There is also a source claiming that the term originated from Ki Nabalu, Ki meaning "have" or "exist", and Nabalu meaning "spirit of the dead".^[11]

Kota is a Malay word for a "fort", "town", or a "city". It is also used formally in a few other Malaysian towns and cities, for example, Kota Bharu, Kota Tinggi, and Kota Kemuning. It can also be used informally to refer to any towns or cities. Hence, a direct translation of the name Kota Kinabalu into English would be "City of Kinabalu" or "Kinabalu City".

Knowing that helps geography. Now if I or you hear that a friend is going to Kota Kinabalu, we know they are going to a city or fort near a mountain.

Grammar
Sentence Word Order
Wikipedia tells us:

Syntax

Tamil is a consistently head-final language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with a typical word order of subject–object–verb (SOV).^[113][114] However, word order in Tamil is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different pragmatic effects. Tamil has postpositions rather than prepositions. Demonstratives and modifiers precede the noun within the noun phrase. Subordinate clauses precede the verb of the matrix clause.

Tamil is a null-subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs, and objects. It is possible to construct grammatically valid and meaningful sentences which lack one or more of the three. For example, a sentence may only have a verb—such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("completed")—or only a subject and object, without a verb such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That [is] my house"). Tamil does not have a copula (a linking verb equivalent to the word is). The word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning more easily.

Now I understand more easily the speech of Indians who I meet at Toastmaster International meetings or in shops and restaurants in Singapore. They are translating into English their sentence construction in Tamil. They are not merely missing out verbs which they don't know. They are translating word for word a correct sentence structure in their own language. Every time I hear them Speak English, I will be reminded of Tamil language sentence structure.

Finally, here's a quick and easy set of words for way making different.

Tamil's Easy Word Endings
A prefix is a syllable added on the front of a word. Easy to remember. (A suffix is a syllable added on the end.)

You say the name of a city, or building, or station or airport or hotel, and raise your eyebrows and shrug and point in both directions, meaning, in sign language, 'which way do I take to such and such a place?'

You get an answer.

 For example, the word vazhi (வழி) meaning "way" can take these to produce ivvazhi (இவ்வழி) "this way", avvazhi (அவ்வழி) "that way", uvvazhi (உவ்வழி) "the medial (middle) way" and evvazhi (எவ்வழி) "which way".

Incidentally, let's finish with a couple of easy to remember and easy to recognize words and signs. Hello in English is halo in tamil. The number zero is written the same, a circle.

For information on Kota Kinabalu, in Malaysian Borneo, see next post.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of languages.