Cooking as therapy

I can't recall exactly when I realised that I found so much joy in feeding people. Maybe it is something that is so intrinsically Indian, or more precisely, a trait I've grown up watching that the feeling is almost too delicious to waste. It makes me happy when those who eat my food find it...

Book Review: A Bookshop in Algiers

"We are the people of this city and our memory is the sum of all our stories." I just finished reading A Bookshop in Algiers, a short book (novella rather) by Algerian-French author Kaouther Adimi. Part-tribute to celebrated French-Algerian publisher, Edmond Charlot, and part-fiction describing the events leading up to the closure of his bookshop,...

Prioritising Writing : A new perspective

It's that time of the year again - after thinking long and hard about making resolutions, to finally writing them down and then, fuelled by this new sense of motivation, begin doing them. Particularly in January, which is otherwise so cold and dreary, it could only be sheer willpower that would motivate you to get...

Ven Pongal

I add too many cashew nuts on my pongal! One of my favourite comfort foods is ven pongal. The salty, warm and creamy rice dish is a breakfast staple, but I often have it for lunch or dinner. South India's answer to its North Indian counterpart, it tends to be laden with ghee, pepper-corns, fried...

My 2020 in Books

Source: http://www.goodreads.com Undoubtedly, 2020 was a tough year for most of us, albeit in different ways. Yet, my silver lining of 2020 was that I finished the 2020 Goodreads Book Challenge- my first finish since 2015 (when I was a fifth year law student and didn't have much to do apart from reading and getting...

I re-watched Cardcaptor Sakura as an adult and found the show to be way ahead of its time

  Japanese anime began being telecast on Indian TV when Cartoon Network launched a block named Toonami in 2001. Pokémon was telecast at 5 pm and gathered a much larger fan following in India than the show that was telecast right after at 5 30 pm- Cardcaptors (Originally Cardcaptor Sakura; Cardcaptors is the Americanized English...

What I Read: April

March felt like an eternity, but April zoomed (pun intended) past us in a flash. I felt that way about the books I read as well. Book#9: Digging In Author: Loretta Nyhan 2018 Digging In reads more like a reflection of coming to terms with grief, loss and life thereafter. It is not impassive, rather it...

What I Read: Jan-March

I'm currently doing the Goodreads Book Reading Challenge for 2020 ( I'm 2 books behind schedule), and I thought I'd start a "What I read" series for each month, beginning with the first three months in this post, April in another and monthly thereafter. I also started reading more after getting inspired by this video...

Covid Diaries: Cutting my hair at home

If you search for cutting your hair at home on google, the first ten hits are inevitably linked to the Coronavirus epidemic . I was in a desperate need for a haircut because it had been over a year since I had cut my hair, and it was now growing beyond proportion. But the moment...

Covid Diaries: Meditation and Mindfulness

  For the longest time, I had considered meditation a whole lot of tosh. Brazen of me, but somehow I had always connected it to spirituality and religion, two concepts that I had vowed to criticise with all my heart and mind. It is ironic and unfortunate that I had to learn of the true...