My World of Food and Travel

The world is changing. It is changing at such a breakneck pace that sometimes it is difficult to stop a while and ponder over where we are headed towards. Apparently, we are progressing. Progress, they say, is required in life – for a better life. I wonder, though, if it should be at the cost of trampling over others’ lives.  A few days back I had stumbled across a horrible sight on Facebook. No, it was not the picture of an ultra-fanatic beheading a hapless hostage. It was something even more appalling and heart-rending. The picture was that of the world – a map depicting  countries with the most number of threatened animals, using different colours to illustrate the findings.  India was splattered with red.  So, ladies and gentlemen, our country holds infamy for having over 90 species of mammals that are threatened – one of the highest in the world. Should we let the curtains drop then, over these wretched creatures who cannot speak for themselves?  ...

I had just logged onto my Facebook account one afternoon at lunch time when my attention was caught by a picture on my feed. I could make out in one glance that it was an Assamese thali – a meal of Assam’s choicest food served in traditional bell metal dish. A detailed read informed me that the person who had posted the image had just had his lunch at a restaurant called Gam’s Delicacy in Bangalore. A hundred taste buds tingled at that name and I immediately put in a query – is it the same one as in Guwahati? The answer was yes.  That same evening we found ourselves in front of the restaurant. Gam’s Delicacy has been a favourite of ours in Guwahati. We would drop in there whenever we felt like having home food but did not want to go through the pains of procuring the produce or cooking the meal. The food is extremely low on oil and even after having loads you would not feel heavy. Plus, we could order those really, really traditional Assamese dishes which our grandmothers...

My Kuala Lumpur trip was a roller coaster ride –evenings I would be traipsing with the Bollywood stars but by day I would be an explorer. I would don my explorer’s hat (invisible to the eye), sling my camera around my neck and say HOHO! Yes, my mode of travel would be the HOHO bus – or as it is known in full – the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus.  One of my ‘hop off’ destinations was the beautiful Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Park. It is located in the picturesque Lake Gardens area, touted to be the lungs of the city, owing to its lush green cover. It took me a minute to figure out the way to the park since most of the signage there pointed to the more famous bird park in the same area. I did see a board saying Taman Rama-Rama but I had no idea that it meant the butterfly park. A few minutes’ walk and I found myself at the gate of the park. A funny thing happened at the ticket counter. The entrance fee for foreigners were higher at 22 RM (I think) and as I handed out the amount to ...