Good morning my tribe!
I’m sitting with a hot cuppa in my hand, as I furiously type on my keyboard to be in time to send off my column. I gave myself some much-needed time off last week, and made doe eyes and whiny noises to my editors who gave me a week off.
I am still an old-fashioned girl who likes to keep her work ethics and commitments as I say it. I am akin to a (he/him) Salman Khan. (I just love using avant-garde terminology to impress folk…if I don’t do it then who will right?) Salman sprouts the same kind of dialogue in his movies! I am an actor, so who says a real-life scenario doesn’t duplicate a ‘reel’ life scenario, huh? But, all things notwithstanding, I was truly chuffed to receive umpteen messages and mails from my readers saying that they missed reading my column last week.
Other than the weekly dose of chuckles, many followers have been very grateful for the amount of time I have devoted to mental health and its related repercussions, and being able to deal with it without cynosure or a sense of embarrassment.
So, things seem to have limped back to normal. Every time I step out of my home, the traffic snarls at me while the abraded roads threaten to swallow me whole!
The cyclone in Chennai seems to have a worse effect on our city than theirs! Before we heard of the horror of children being swept into open manholes, now it is complete vehicles and sections of buildings that are being swept away. But our BBMP officials are unstoppable.
Undaunted PPP (party people personified), set out to squeeze the maximum enjoyment out of the city. Sitting at home, twiddling our thumbs, cooking, falling sick (or avoiding falling sick) isn’t so enjoyable after all.
Many invitations to a spate of cake mixings (I have never understood that terminology. Shouldn’t it be called fruit soaking?) came my way. I was running out of excuses declining those invitations. After all my two years of twilight zoning must amount to something right? The only ‘cake–mixing’ I deemed to attend was to bid farewell to a dear friend, the GM of ITC Gardenia, Amaan Kidwai.
Amaan has always been a quiet, gracious and wonderful friend and I will be sad to see him go. Hisintimate party abounded with good cheer while yours truly gave him a little speech and sang a ditty. We bid you au revoir good friend.
Kiran Soans is a veritable power house of information regarding food. His company ‘World on a Plate’ has revolutionised the culinary world by bringing in world renowned master-chefs for their expertise, running culinary events and discovering ‘hidden-gem’ restaurants and giving them a platform to showcase their talents. His invitation to brunch at Farmlore was super exciting as it was on my bucket list.
From farm to fork. One eats what is grown and the food transcends all borders. This is a brainchild of the young and reticent Kaushik R, who hails from a family of hoteliers, and who hand-picked the free-spirited young chef, Johnson Ebenezer and his team to turn this restaurant into a culinary talking-point. Finding an excuse to dine with the charming Reuben and Nidhi Kataria is never a problem.
Last night, a couple of us met again at the pre-launch of his Pan-Asian ‘gem’ Lotus-Oriental at The Leela Bhartiya City to enjoy the ambiance of the roof-top bar and feast on cuisine ranging from the Thai, Japanese and Chinese genre.
Yes! Life is slowly but surely turning around.