BENGALURU: Another year has passed and I have notched up another Diwali and birthday under my belt. The only difference is that now I am too tired to be excited and celebrating, only means more clearing and cleaning to do in its aftermath.
The wildly enthusiastic (forwarded) messages get my goat too, because I am old fashioned and there is an almost manic need to answer each one personally. I have become a more ‘intimate group, good wine and food soiree’ type person. I have to be on performance mode with too many people around, and when people I hardly know screech on top of their lungs to draw attention to themselves, I balk! Unfortunately my ooru abounds with a ‘jolly-come-lately’ band of interlopers who try to interject themselves into our genteel world with sheer bad manners and deception.
So whenever I get the chance, I jump at an opportunity to participate in a convivial get-together, like the one we were invited to by the genial GM of ITC Windsor Manor Deepak Menezes. One doesn’t need an excuse to dine at their signature restaurant Dum Pukht Jolly Nabobs. We have been regulars there for over fifteen years, but, this was a special because we got to meet Deepak’s ethereal looking better-half Seema Kulkarni. We sat mesmerized, as the fragrant and delicious Awadhi and North-West Frontier fare rolled out under the watchful eye of Master Chef Srinivas who has helmed the restaurant for many years. Scintillating conversation mixed with heady cocktails and a superlative dinner did make my world go round.
My week only got better as we joined a small group of ‘good-food aficionados’ for lunch at a newly opened restaurant, ‘Travellers Bungalow’. The food was part Georgian/Armenian and I must say that it was a change from the ‘pub-grub’ that one has gotten used to. The place is eclectic, serving up some great cocktails like Mangrove Sour (raw mangoes and Jalapeño tequila) and the talented Chef Tanya Joshi (Chef Sabyasachi’s protégé) looked pleased as punch we tucked into our Georgian Khinkali! My type of afternoon where one is too full to even laugh!
The cherry on my proverbial cake was a gorgeous sunny day spent at the newest hotspot Farmlore, the sustainable ‘farm-to-fork’ restaurant set amidst lush greenery and vegetable patches. For ‘city-slickers’ like us, it was the ultimate, in terms of feeling like ‘earth-people’ again and getting the ‘monocratic sustainable warriors’ off our backs.
It was a great post-birthday lunch and our hosts Sajai and Sapna Singh went all out to make it memorable. They even had good friend Madhav Sehgal pop in as a surprise guest.
Accept your blessings from the universe. Don’t sell the sun to buy a candle.