My World of Food and Travel

Dear Ma, First of all, let me assure you that your grandson had his glass of milk and he is cheerfully playing with his friends outside. And no, the gate is not open – he will not be running across the road. There, now you can breathe easy. I realize now, Ma, that it is not an easy job – of being a mother. I don’t blame you now for all the frenetic calls you had made to my PG accommodation in Delhi to know if I was back from college safe, after reading a terrible incident in the newspaper. You would listen to every bit of news about the city I resided in. So much so that I would turn to you to know if the autorickshaw strike had been called off and I could go home in one. I chuckled with mirth as you rattled off transport statistics in one breath. Then, it struck me that you had gathered all information regarding my daily travel - just because I was your child. You were the first one to call me and warn me about the Mumbai local train bomb blasts just as I had approa...

One of my earliest memories is of poring over a thick book, its cover worn out with the vigor of the reading sessions. My first ‘big’ book as a child was Valmiki’s Ramayana, translated into Assamese. I had forgotten most of the tales in the book till I picked up this book for review.  Ramayana The Game of Life: Shattered Dreams is the sequel to the series being written by Shubh Vilas. The author is himself a spiritual seeker and a motivational speaker while holding a degree in engineering and law with specialization in Patent Law. He also helps individuals deal with modern-life situations by applying the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana and other dharmic traditions. Taking support of Valmiki’s Ramayana as its guiding light, the author strives to entwine poetic beauty from the Kamba Ramayana and Ramacharitramanas, as well as folk philosophy from the Loka Pramana tales, to demonstrate how the ancient epic holds immediate relevance to modern life.  I have not...

The first thing that strikes you as you pick up this book is the steely, if slightly contemptuous, eyes of Ustad (T-24), the largest dominant tiger of Ranthambhore. At the time of writing this post, Ustad’s life hangs precariously for killing a forest official and he may be declared a man-eater, if proven. Ashok Mahindra, by a chance of fate, had chosen to keep this magnificent yet notorious beast as the cover page of his coffee table book. It is almost as if he knew Ustad was to become infamous for his deeds. The book is a riveting collection of the author-photographer’s best moments spent in the wild, right from the rolling dales of Valparai in the south to the tall elephant-grass strewn swamplands of Kaziranga in the north-eastern part of the country. He has rightfully dedicated the book to the young adults, beseeching them to take care of the threatened species before it is too late. His passion for wildlife is evident in the ‘Thirteen ways forward’, brought about by years...

This in another of my long due posts. In the meantime, the husband lost his stash of Chikmagalur pictures and so what you get to see here are my poorly taken clicks. I rarely use my camera ever since the husband decided to don the role of photographer. Thankfully, I had clicked these on a whim, so at least I have something to show now. In case, we are able to retrieve his folder, I shall update this post.  We had visited Chikmagalur almost a year back in July (2014). Monsoon had set in but the magnitude was relatively lower. The heat made us look towards the hill stations near Bangalore and without much bickering we settled on Chikmagalur, although we had visited it once briefly. I browsed through the net searching for a decent accommodation, but somehow the ones that I liked the most were full. A foreboding thought crossed my mind that I would bump into half of Bangalore’s populace in Chikmagalur.  Then I came across Devigiri homestay and it seemed to be a quiet place. ...

I am really the queen of procrastination. My phone memory is full of pictures I had taken at random places I had dined in, with the hope that someday I will write reviews of those places, or maybe an article on at least the food if not the place. Sigh. The pictures are languishing in their own world. Also, I have this hopelessly bad habit of starting to write something and not finishing it. Guilt eats me away as I think of my trips made to Shillong, Wayanad, Chikmagalur, Bhadra WLS, Belur-Halebidu and repeat visits to other places.  Someday I plan to finish writing them. Just that I don’t know when. And then again, I don’t need to keep deadlines for my own blog, do I? I shall move at my own sweet pace… Today morning, I accidentally stumbled across my phone camera images, the ones from last year that I had downloaded into a folder. A few of them jumped out, calling for attention “Hellooo, plan on writing about me?” I took a long look, jogged my memory, salivated at the thought...

We were on our way to BR hills last weekend. Dawn had still not broken over and it was dark and still outside as we drove through slumbering hamlets. Deta (my father) kept up a constant banter on various topics. Perhaps he was concerned by the recurrent yawns let out by the husband, who was also our sole driver. I was meanwhile yapping away with my sister and cousins on our WhatsApp group.  “Going to the jungle again!” I let out a whoop of joy. “Hoping to see a tiger. Let’s see if Deta’s luck works for us.” “Be careful of elephants,” one of my cousins warned. “They might sniff out uncle and come to meet him.” Thus, our talk shifted towards elephants. The elephants of Manas Wildlife Sanctuary. Of Bahardur Singh, the brave, in particular. Bahardur Singh was one of the forest department’s elephants. He was my father’s favourite - a gentle giant and a regal specimen. I remember riding on his back often in my childhood. His beauty and well-trained nature had even fou...

Image source: www.dreamstime.com We always had a house full of pets as long as I can remember. My earliest memories of living in Manas are filled with various sights and sounds of domestic animals and birds. There, due to the our huge residence grounds and the number of people to help us out, we had a couple of cows, a small herd of goats, two sheep, a pair of rabbits,  a number of dogs, a fish tank, several colourful pigeons and budgerigars, and a coop full of chicken. Ducks and cats missed out on being with us since they did not find much favor with my father. We also had a family of barn owls living in our attic and, well, a few bee hives in our mango trees. Intermittently, if I dig my memories further, I am reminded of seeing a domesticated purple moorhen scuttling about in our yard, a deer fawn tied to a post, a few turtles and of course, the unfortunate little tiger cub .  If you think that the situation changed when we shifted from that big campus in a wildlif...