I have always believed in the serendipity of books. It is not Bibliomancy. But, more like synchronicity. The timing of finding a book or a passage from a book that has an uncanny relevance to something happening in my life just then. Have blogged about it in the past. …

They say Dane, dane pe likha hain khane wale ka naam. Roughly translated into English, it would mean every crumb you get to eat has your name on it. By that token, my last couple of weeks have been assigned to Awadhi food. The first tryst was not in Lucknow…

‘There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from Plan A’ is a quote credited to actor Will Smith. Apocryphal or not, this aphorism seems to have left a deep impression in the minds of strategists in the Indian National Congress. In any situation in life, war…

One of the casualties of the broiler revolution has been duck meat. Though duck was never as popular as Chicken in India even in the pre-commercial poultry farming era, it was not rare. Especially in eastern India, Kerala and even Goa, which had a large number of stagnant water bodies…

The state’s story is one of grand visions and a master plan with a long runway, with many blocks coming together over a thirty-year horizon November 29, 2023 / 12:18 PM IST If the IPL was a marketing phenomenon, the recent India-Australia World Cup Finals held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad was the mother of all sporting events. Whatever happened was not (ordinary) cricket. The match was incidental or at best a sub-plot around which the property was created. The bigger story was the marketing of the city of Ahmedabad and the state of Gujarat. Analysed with hindsight, it all began with building the stadium and naming it after the…

I arrived in Mumbai for my first job in 1983. Me and a fellow trainee, a namesake — Sandeep Beri, now a senior advocate in Delhi — were assigned chummery accommodation. Sandeep was very amused to hear our Maharashtrian lady cook refer to potatoes as Batata. Both of us thought…

In the nineties, the multinational company I used to work for started its operations in China. Many from the Indian subsidiary were sent there for the start-up. I would be surprised to find they would carry with them suitcase loads of dal. Apparently, our humble lentils were scarce in China…

With bone or without bone is the question. At restaurants, a common question customers are asked when ordering a meat dish is do you want it ‘with bone’ or ‘boneless’. The query sounds innocuous and matter of fact. …

The great RK Narayan had written in his autobiography — My Days — that in traditional South Indian homes the ultimate sign of acceptance of a daughter-in-law in the family is when the matriarch allows her to make coffee for the family. …