Happy Hour ... and Me

As a foodie, it’s your birthright to binge on roadside food. Yes, I stand by this even post Delli Belly!! Now imagine a road-side joint, plonked along a junction, serving you not just the usual pav-bhaji, sandwiches & juices but also pastas, sizzlers and much more. So that’s Blossoms for you in a nut-shell. But hold-on; variety is not this joint’s USP, it’s the creative & appetizing food offerings which are!! Someone has actually experimented with the food, innovated and improvised on various ingredients and put them together. Trust me most of them are scrumptious & with hardly any disappointments. Blossoms started off as a humble juice center while gradually building on its menu. Even today, it retains its juice center flavor, by having an interesting spread of juices, falooda and milkshake menu with some funny and filmy names. They have mixed and matched fruits, like once I remember having tried some strange combination of kiwi with some fruits and it was lip-smacking. I ...

During my stay in Chennai, my friend Sandhya took me to this Thai joint one evening post work. I was skeptical about trying Thai food at Chennai, and therefore kept my expectations under check. However, I was proved completely wrong as here is where I landed up having the best 'Indian' Thai food. Well, I have yet to visit Thailand, to taste the authentic Thai food, as I believe that the taste is customized to the countries local taste, but amongst the Indian joints, this one is one of the best I have had. A simple and extremely classy place, with wood that decor renders a very warm and cozy feeling. For the crowd mostly you’ll see a lot of corporates and few families as I doubt if Chennai folks have still awakened to this amazing place. The main attraction I found in this place is the complementary starter called Mein Khum, hopefully have got the name right. They serve you a leaf, which I am not so sure what it is, but its shaped like a beetle leaf, on that need to put little h...

A while ago I finished reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “The Palace Of Illusions” which I had stumbled upon when casually browsing a bookstore at the airport. The book presents a women’s perspective of the Mahabharata, by narrating the epic by none other than Draupadi, who was hugely held responsible for the war taking place. Personally for me, Mahabharata has always evoked a deep level of excitement. If I were to simply put it, it’s a lethal combination of drama, upscale levels of politics, games played in pursuit of power & love, with the oomph added by brawny men. However, predominantly Mahabharata is more about the men, their aspirations, lives & ambitions that sometimes scale beyond power. It has etched out some great heroes like Bheesma, Drona, Krishna, Arjun, Karna and the list goes on. So unless the author consciously chooses, the women in this epic will not be presented as central protagonist. So in that aspect, I liked the book and a refreshing narr...