Happy Hour ... and Me

‘The cupid is still active in colleges, in offices and in today’s world, also on the internet’ is what the introduction of the book states. The author then goes to aptly point out that, love actually needs to sustain itself once the ‘first flush’ of passion passes by. This according to me is what renders the cupid’s role far more challenging. As his job now, isn’t just to commence ‘happily ever after’ but ensure that entire journey lasts that way. It’s this role of cupid that this Chicken Soup explores through stories of Indian couples both young and old by the use of 8 categories. Thankfully, the book isn’t focusing solely on the rosy aspects of love, where the boy meets the girl and they walk together into the sunset hand in hand. Nope. Only the first 60 odd pages are stories about how people found their soul-mates in their friends, or demure colleague, or in an online friend under the category of ‘Made in Heaven’ . Few stories in this category dangerously border on the flims...

While aimlessly surfing TV during lunch today, I landed up watching few scenes of ‘You've got email’ and came across a nice dialogue from there. " People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened"  . If you look around, this actually holds true.Over the last couple of months, I have actual seen this so closely around me. Whether its changes happening on work front or alterations at the home end, change seems synonymous to resistance, irrespective of whether it will do you good. One gets so sore everytime one is displaced from the coziness of the comfort zone, especially the older ones. The older you get, the more you want your bets to give the same outcome as what you desire.Even if there are experiences waiting to take you to a better place, you would vehemently resist that. Therefore, I feel this so called 'Steady State' in IT terms in personal liv...

Eateratti this time is going to give you a peek-view into the food that was meant for Gods.For the first time in my life, I witnessed the scale of spiritual dimension of food up-close. As a part of the Deewali Festivities (one of the most important Hindu Festivals), Annakoot Utsav was celebrated with opulence by my in-laws. Annakoot literally means a mountain of food, where at least 56 different varieties or ‘chappan bhog’ is prepared and offer it to Lord Krishna. I had seen this, once at the Iskcon Temple, but this one was celebrated at home!! Finishing touches to the offering being added by Mom-in law The idea is to invite Lord Krishna or Thakurji in to our homes & offer him gratitude in the form of food, for everything that he has been blessing us with. Therefore, every single item that’s offered to Lord Krishna or Thakurji is hand-made at home for which, weeks of preparation was devotedly put in by my mom-in law, her sister-in law my Aunt Sonal Kaki and their mother –in law who...

Eateratti: Oven Fresh Revisting with new things on the platter with my devoted foodie friends Gaurav, Niel, Karishma and Mihir.Check my updated new post at. http://eateratti.blogspot.com/2011/06/oven-fresh.html

Imagine this, you are a published writer, with a dozen odd books under your name. You frequently write articles on random things for various newspapers, magazines etc. After a while you realize that you have a repository of published & unpublished articles, and you are left wondering what can be done with them. Then zoop, pops out a brilliant thought. ‘Lets publish a book with those’ and in order to bind the randomness together, let’s use the threads of literature around it’. I guess thats how Anita Nair would possibly have incubated Good Night and God Bless. However for me, it was good thought and the outcome was blissful. I thrive on bed-time reading, and that’s exactly what made me pick up this book, as the book’s back cover describes ‘a bedtime ritual of drinking a warm cup of malted milk and along the books by her bedside’. The book talks about h er bedside table, which usually contains an assortment of books & the delight that they bring alongside. She has com...

As a kid every time I accompanied my dad to good old humble restaurants, I would linger behind a few seconds till he left the table, to quickly grab the coins that he would place in the sauf bowl (I thought he forgot the money & once when I reminded him, all he said was ‘that’s ok’, so I ensured his money was safe with me, you see). So this assured source of income for my piggy bank continued, till the day he caught me picking the coins (damn my timing!!).That’s when he introduced me to the concept of tipping, that we should leave behind some money for the waiters who served us. However, the last couple of years, our bills have seen a 5 to 12 per cent ‘service charge’ added to it, leaving us confused with the question ‘to tip or not to tip’. Some say its goes to the Government and some say it doesn’t. So here in my next blog, I decided to decode the mystery of the Service Charge for you. Your bill will predominantly contain VAT and service tax (which is applicable to restaurants ha...

Recently, IDEA Cellular's been coming with interesting set of advertisements, carrying a catchy tag line “What an Idea sirji.” So their recent AD features an idea to combat the increasing population of India. They suggest that, couples should get hooked onto 3G instead of each other. Now the ad was very humorously done and is likeable, however on the hindsight, we all know that technology which is meant to get people closer,has actually also pulled people away in its own way. This pulled me back an incident that happened few years ago, when the electric switch board of my building caught fire.Resulting which, we had to spend about a couple of days in absolute darkness. So after dinner, all our doors, windows would be opened and everyone would gather together into groups and chit-chat the night away. Even though living without electricity made me relate to my nomad ancestors in a very special way, I actually started looking forward to the evenings, when we would spend time ...