In my six years and a half years in Mum­bai, I have never been to Kihim beach. So when the oppor­tu­nity cropped up, I decided to grab it. We reached our des­ti­na­tion — Danny’s bun­ga­low on Kihim beach — on Sat­ur­day evening at about 6.00 p.m. The bun­ga­low, also goes by the more glam­orous name […]

I was flip­ping through the papers yes­ter­day, and stopped by the movies sec­tion to find out what was run­ning. Must watch Mona Lisa Smile and Mys­tic River I noted to myself. Later in the day, I got an SMS from a friend ask­ing if I wanted to go for Mona Lisa Smile. It hasn’t got­ten very […]

This is one of my favourite pic­tures of Kit Kit. I was arrang­ing these toys on the table when she jumped up and sat right in the mid­dle as if to say, “Look, I’m much cuter than all of them!” I know I’m biased, but isn’t she?! Know­ing my weak­ness for feline crea­tures, my sis­ter sent […]

Gan­guly for los­ing it (again!) Bal­aji for his spunk and smile Pathan for his enthu­si­asm Kaif for giv­ing it all he has Dravid for his deter­mi­na­tion Ten­dulkar for his grav­ity defy­ing leap And VVS Lax­man for finally find­ing it! And of course, Inza­mam Ul Haq and Moin Khan for putting up a great fight to the finish!

I love work­ing in acrylics, since it’s a pretty flex­i­ble medium. And plus there’s lots of room for error. You can cover up your boo-boos quickly and rework por­tions you’re unhappy with. But trans­par­ent water­colours, which I’ve been try­ing to get a hang of lately, is a totally dif­fer­ent ball­game. One error and your whole […]

We had Yard­boy, who ditched us and went back to his home coun­try. We have Nancy Gandhi who writes evoca­tively about life in Chen­nai as an out­sider. Here are two more to add to the list. India from another per­spec­tive. Daniel Brett, ‘the sahib of behala’ and Sonia Toor, a ‘British Indian in Bom­bay’ (Sonia, […]

I started off dis­lik­ing fish. I hated pick­ing bones. I still remem­ber tak­ing a trip to Goa with my office col­leagues in 1998, when I avoided the deli­cious fish prepa­ra­tions and ate chicken instead. They all thought I was crazy. I prob­a­bly was! I am not sure at what point it changed, but I am glad […]

If you are an Indian study­ing abroad, I’d love to hear from you regard­ing any strange, heart-warming, funny or inter­est­ing cul­tural expe­ri­ence that you had when you first landed in the coun­try you are now liv­ing in. Some­thing that you didn’t expect, or took you some time to get used to. A humor­ous story worth […]