Chiffonesque

From www.pexels.com Returned from Bangalore and it was a really good trip. 1. Got a superb haircut. Went to Mirror and You at UB City on a whim. A lady called Neelima cut my hair. She worked in Kit and Sam in Bombay earlier and is very very good and very very swift. Was in an out of the parlor in under 30 minutes...and this includes hair wash. 2. Took the metro. It's so great and convenient and cheap - considering the autofares and cab fares in Bangalore. 3. Ate seriously good food. 4. Had lots to drink. Toit on Indranagar brews its own beer and I tried something called the Tintin which was excellent and a variety brewed from Basmati rice - which was awesome. (I just heard that they're opening in Pune and Bombay, which is something I will very closely watch out for.) The Long Island Iced Tea at Lemon Tree topped up with Jasmine tea instead of Cola is lovely! 5. Church Street, Brigade Road, and MG Road - in that order - feel like Christmas. You walk down one of th...

At my friend's house, I've taken to watching some cooking shows with her. One of them is 'My Kitchen Rules' which is really excellent! It's an Australian show (or rather I'm watching the Australian version) and those people are so good! Although there are a couple of mean Asian girls, the show overall has a good nice vibe. Somehow, the Australian shows don't get as vicious as the American shows. We also tried out Thalassarie here, in Electronic City. I believe it's a chain and it's known for the Kerala food, although they have a multi-cuisine menu. The mushroom pepper fry and the ghee rice was out-stand-ing! It was superlative! I absolutely loved it! Wrote another piece on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-grows-garden-mukta-raut?trk=pulse_spock-articles

I have thought of writing fiction on LinkedIn. Well, not full-blown fiction, really - maybe a vignette, a small poem, an paragraph on something from my imagination. Is that weird? Is LinkedIn not the place to do that? Those pieces will be my equivalent of the potted plants you put in an office to humanize and pretty up the place. I put up the first one there. It's titled 'a mood'. I don't know how to link it here. Okay. I found it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mood-mukta-raut?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

In Bangalore now. Here for a short trip. The rain is cold.So cold. Places seem to be really far far far away from each other but the distances are choked up with a lot of prettiness. I went to Lalbaugh the other day and it was so lush and beautiful. The space around the Lalbag lake was stunning and dreamy! There were three shades of blue and grey in the skies and maybe five shades of greens in the waters. We saw the most spectacular kinds of trees with mindbendingly awesome trunks! Trees are what took my breath away in Bangalore during the first visit. Trees are what I loved this time around too! This time I have really enjoyed the food here. We went to this place, 'Republic of Noodles' in Lemon Tree and it's a brilliant place. (This one's in Electronic City). My friend wanted her Long Island Iced Tea to be topped up with tea, not cola. It sounded interesting so I thought I'd try the same. It was delicious and made the drink even more potent. Our LIIT was topped ...

Met up with a couple of pals last evening at Apache, which is a Pune cheap booze hangout place, I hear. The equivalent of Gokul's or Janata in Bombay. One of my friends has moved to Bangalore and she was telling me all about the breweries there and the set up availablle for entrepreneurs who'd like a space to work off from - you get a daily pass for a fee and in return you get a work station, unlimited coffee and unlimited wi-fi. THAT is the making of a big city! We had beers which were not very chilled until we complained. Then we got chilled beers. Then the three of us talked about spooky stuff and it was good. I misread the date of my travel to Bangalore. I'm leaving tomorrow instead of day after which is when I thought I would be leaving. There's a ton of stuff I need to finish and I haven't even started yet. It's likely that I will need to work during the first couple of days during my leave and my laptop is on the fritz...so there is THAT. Anyway, I...

I was very sleepy yesterday. It was compounded by the fact that I had very little to do and the whole day to do it. So I procrastinated. So much so that even my procrastination procrastinated. It kicked in later in the day towards tea time. Then I just felt like leaving for home without doing a lick of work. THEN I felt guilty because well, I get paid to do good work. And if good work is not possible, then SOME work - which is what I set my benchmark as. By that time, my eyes were almost shutting so I went over to Nature's Basket because I wanted to look at wine bottles. They seem to rejuvenate me somehow or get some shot of cold-pressed vegetable juices that are supposed to be good for you. Once I was there, I thought it was no point trying to fool myself so I just reached for two cans of Red Bull instead. Also got a packet of instant Ramen that looked funky and stupid, therefore appealing, to my tired eyes. Anyway, I paid up with my Sodexo coupons - which is the best part of...

I searched for books on loneliness. Good Reads throws up these interesting suggestions (Jane Eyre and 1984 are part of it). http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3468.Books_on_Loneliness Yesterday I did not go to work because there was another personal crisis. I cooked for a friend. I bought three bottles of wine and my friend and I had all of it. We ate on the terrace and she made me listen to some really nice songs from Qayamat se Qayamat Tak. For a bit, we lay on your backs looking up at the sky and it was a beautiful grey-black-blue sky and thick tufts of leaves blew stiffly - the way one would swing a bottle-brush slowly. Today I was listening to an interview where a bunch of writers were discussing David Foster Wallace. Someone suggested that maybe he tried to 'do a Kurt Cobain', i.e. - he killed himself so that he could immortalize himself a cult figure. (I thought it was a very harsh and cruel assessment). Someone else said that Wallace killing himself was not ab...

Man’s Search for Meaning  by Viktor E. Frankl This is a vital book. It’s about a doctor who underwent the concentration camp experience and, based on his experience, devised the theory and practice of logotherapy. Logotherapy is the treatment of a condition or a disorder by linking it to a person’s will to find meaning in his or her life. It is quite a major school of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The premise, put simply, is in a quote cited in the book, “A man with a strong enough why can put up with any kind of how .” (It’s not the exact quote but close enough.) The book, towards the end, has some tools to understand and apply logotherapy to one’s life.  My interest in this book, however, was more at a small, individual level – as in, how do you butter bread or pour tea after you’ve come out from a concentration camp? You have lost everything - all your loved ones, your life’s work; you have undergone pain, you got through day after day clawing at an...

This British astrologer talks about his personal experience about curses. I found it very moving, especially when he talks about how he empathizes with whoever feels cursed. Here is the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qOjvB1oRnk It feels very genuine. He lay out how much his own charges are, how he gets nervous when he talks about the kind of backlash he's expecting or the kind that came his way earlier.  

1. The Book Song Café in Aundh behind McDonald's: The first thing you should know is that it's very very cute - like dollhouse cute - and maybe that's why I'm gushing. Neat space with nifty knick-knacks and books in Korean. There's a tiny patio, a space on top where you sit on the floor along with some stuffed toys seen in a teen's room, and maybe two small tables on the ground level. I love that space for the nibbles of good taste that spot is surrounded with. You get a great assortment of herb teas (I like their white chocolate and lavender) and very nice French toast. Also, I'm partial to the hazelnut black - which is black coffee with hazelnut flavour. They don't accept cards, service is slow-ish, and no takeaways. But it's a pretty, pretty spot with some good stuff. Reminds me of a simpler time - which is exactly the mood I go for when having coffee. 2. Malaka Spice, Baner: I think that a restaurant is evolved when they have thoughtful non-c...

This piece of lush beauty is from www.pexels.com Weather so soulful, it feels like destiny.

Today, there were four glasses of some mediocre merlot and a nice dessert wine. There were two glasses of chilled white wine. There were three desserts - jaggery pudding, jaggery ice-cream, and  jaggery tart - all at Malaka Spice. There was a late night drive with someone we just met. The car ran out of fuel on the highway. Then even later my friend and I went for a drive by ourselves. There was a near-enough accident with a car with two boys who chased and followed our cars until they had shouted an abuse and showed the finger. That was the day today.  Add caption  

Last night, I sat in the car after driving back from Phoenix. I'd returned from a work trip to Lonavala. I'd slumped off in the cab ride to office. By the time I reached work, I was shivering with hunger and fever. My neck hurt. A slow fever was taking over. I wanted to get away soon from work, so my friend and I decided to watch a movie. So after a 12 hour work-day, I drove to Phoenix. There was a mighty traffic snarl. Took me two hours to reach the cinema. My eyes watered and my knuckles were clenched. I was very angry. It was again a really late night. I had started feeling weepy all over again. It's like clockwork how the dark pain unspools on nights. Then the song 'Kuchh toh bata zindagi' from Bajrangi Bhaijaan came on. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwrCYAIdkeM ) I love that song and I love that movie. This song is picturised on Nawaz, Salman, and the little girl when they're looking for the girl's home. They haven't found it yet but the...

It is unnecessarily slow and loud in some places and although one remains a huge Tabu fan, one wonders if she's becoming a contemporary Rakhee of sorts who always has problems with her sons (Namesake, Astitva, Haider, this one...). Rajat Kapur is wasted in a linen shirt, and who is that napkin who plays Ajay Devgn's wife? But in places where it's only Devgn, Tabu, and that stellar cop - Gaitonde or Gaikonde, I rooted, I cheered, and I applauded. Ajay Devgn's eyes need their own separate credits in casting. It was a good watch, all in all...