The mystery of the reluctant cabbies, and a Raavana warning
Our correspondent goes on a culinary bender through Kolkata, Bangalore and Delhi, no thanks to the taxi and rickshaw drivers of the land

India Coffee House in Kolkata: Tagore, art and intellectual conversation • Andrew Fidel Fernando/ESPNcricinfo Ltd
When I come in from the airport on a Sunday, Kolkata residents are spending the late afternoon on the streets. As the taxi goes through a residential neighbourhood, three children are in heated argument over their cricket match. We turn the corner and a group of old men are sitting on a mat on the pavement, in heated argument over their card game. There is an infectious buzz about the city. The old Raj-era buildings are in various states of disrepair, but that just serves to bring them to life.
Almost anyone who has lived in or hails from Kolkata still refers to it as Calcutta. It is a city that industrialised rapidly as the capital of the British Raj during the second half of the 19th century, so perhaps it is understandable if it wishes to hold on to a fragment of what some perceive to be glory days.
Though it's thought the Sinhala people have their origins in East India, the two cultures have diverged substantially when it comes to food. A lot of southern Sri Lankan cuisine is loosely defined by roaring flavours and heat. From the admittedly little I've had of it, the strength of Bengali cuisine seems to be subtlety and relative simplicity.
Many of the cabs in Kolkata are beautiful old Ambassador cars, painted yellow with a navy blue stripe running horizontally just below the window. Almost all these cabs also have "No Refusal" printed on the side, which naturally leads me to believe that the drivers would not dream of refusing me a ride.
A sublime mutton curry at a dimly lit Kolkata institution called Peter Cat, and in the afternoon, my colleagues and I head to the India Coffee House, off College Street. The place can't have changed much in the last half-century at least. A portrait of Rabindranath Tagore looks over patrons, as rows of ceiling fans whirr overhead. There is even a mezzanine floor above, and the yellow walls are a trove of local art. One line drawing in the corner, which seems to have been done by a Kolkata artist, features a man with a Maori facial tattoo.
The first sign I see as I walk into Bangalore airport reads: "Pollution ke Raavan ko roko, Hawa Badlo" (Stop the Raavana of pollution, change the air). This is a public service announcement from the Indian government, which vilifies Raavana - a mythical king from the drop-shaped island south of the Palk Strait.
Where Kolkata cab drivers gave fairly straightforward refusals, some Bangalore auto-wallahs are wonderfully theatrical about it. I stop a three-wheeler going roughly in the right direction and ask if he would mind taking me to the stadium. He shoots me a look of emphatic disdain, which asks who the hell I think I am and how dare I ask him to go to the Chinnaswamy, crinkles his nose, and without a word drives on.
Nine days into the tour, halfway through a heavenly meal at a restaurant called Junior Kuppanna's, I get just a tiny bit homesick. The place serves South Indian food, on banana leaves - just like they do in joints all over Colombo or Anuradhapura or Jaffna. And the flavours - of ground coriander, cumin and curry leaves - are close to those encountered in the north of Sri Lanka, just without Sri Lankan touches like cinnamon or rampe and murunga leaves.
I had been thumped at squash by former colleague Devashish Fuloria during last year's World Cup, but I fancied that in the intervening time I had improved enough to match him. This was delusion. My match went about as well as Sri Lanka's World T20 campaign, except that I couldn't blame my showing on a bad knee or board politicking. Playing with a broken racquet, Devashish wins six sets to three in an inferno of a squash court. Then perhaps out of sympathy, he books and pays for my Uber back to the guest house.
The man running the small hotel next to our Delhi Airbnb apartment has a good bouncer. I find this out, as I have nothing to do but join the game of galli cricket taking place in the street.
There is a Delhi bar called Odeon Social that is definitely worth the visit if you like good beer, decent food, and hearing loss. A few of us have come here to watch the West Indies v South Africa match, and though the music is already quite loud to begin with, it becomes progressively more offensive as the match goes on. We are not far apart from each other, but by the end of the evening, smoke signals would have been more efficient than any verbal communication. I am quite certain several frequencies have been lost to my hearing forever.
My wife is visiting for the long weekend, so we decide to see a few of the sights. First stop is Humayun's Tomb - one of the first Mughal garden tombs on the subcontinent, and a precursor to the Taj Mahal. The ponds in the causeway leading into the main building are drained when we visited, but the tomb itself is arresting nonetheless, the marble dome shimmering when sunlight strikes it. There are as many as 100 tombs in the same complex, leading to it being called the "dormitory of the Mughals", though no one seemed to be bunking.
We are staying very near Connaught Place, a zone of three concentric circles that is home to one of the most important business districts in India. At the centre of Connaught Place is an Indian flag about twice as big as any single piece of fabric I have ever seen. It would take a proper hurricane to fully unfurl it.
Back to Old Delhi and through the bustling, centuries-old warren of a bazaar, where everything from sarees to meat to electronics to holidays are sold on lanes each as wide as a tree trunk, and shops the size of thimbles. One of the many culinary highlights of the trip is the chicken tikka at Karim's, which is just through an alleyway near the Jama Masjid. The man behind the counter tells me Karim's has been in the same family for five generations. There must be a hundred places of business in stone-throwing distance that could make similar claims.
Through the tournament some Sri Lanka fans have theorised the ICC is out to get their team since so many bad decisions have gone against them. In Bangladesh, a number of people had protested the "unfair suspensions" of two key bowlers. A few New Zealand fans have groused their side had to play at five separate venues, in comparison to England, who only played at two. There have been familiar Twitter whinges from Australia about Asian bowlers with dodgy actions.
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @andrewffernando