Indelible Musings

This post has been due since long. And, finally I managed to put it here on the blog. Lunch Pi has been a blessing in disguise whenever I have had to order food in a short span of time. Food, which not only tastes good but is also well-packaged, and filling enough. All this at a decent enough cost. Lunch Pi's menu ranges from Rs100-300. Their combos are to die for, while there standalone menu items such as pasta and lasagne are worth the money spent. More importantly, the food is cooked well and is never ever dripping of excess oil, which is a usual site in otherwise restaurant food. However, I cannot say much on this as whenever I have ordered, it has either been the Chinese Combo or North Indian Non Veg Thali or Pasta. So, with the coupon that I got via Chennai Bloggers Club, I was super confused as to what should I order. Having eaten almost all of their Chinese Combos, and since dinner was already by then, I decided to order some standalone items from their menu. I chose ...

It's been more than two months since I visited my blog. Not that I did not have anything to write. Just that it was that lazy moment that stuck on to me for too long. I however, penned down a few lines on my Facebook page. I shall be sharing them here too in the subsequent blog posts. Today, I had almost made plans of getting down to write in a notebook with a pencil, just to ensure that those lines make way to my blog post soon. But I couldn't resist the temptation of typing on my laptop after ages. Strange as it may sound, for the past couple of months, I had been posting my blogs mainly through the laptops I got for official purpose. I don't know where this post will head towards the end, but I assure you it will give you a heads up about where I had disappeared with my blog for this long. In the two months that I was away from the blog, I went through a turmoil in my mind and heart. I was taken aback by my pessimism, my unwillingness to accept things how they are; ...

I know it's been long since I wrote something in the #ChennaiThroughMyEyes series. My plans of making it a weekly series have definitely gone for a toss. But I am glad that I am back with something to share with all of you once more. In this post, I shall tell you about the bond that I have developed with a few online friends who have become an integral part of my offline world. Though there are many such friends I have made living in Chennai for the past four and a half years, these few recent additions seem like those long lost friends, whom I discovered thanks to Facebook. It is not just the friendship that I feel good about. It is the strength that I gather when I speak to them, mostly online, because of our busy schedules. How we connected We all share a different sort of camaraderie. None of us know each other for more than a few months, but the way we met and interacted seems like an eternity. It was one underline thing that connected all of us- Food. Part of a social m...

I grew up in a nuclear family. Though my grandparents and other relatives lived in the same city, we met on festivals or occasions. I always detested the fact that my maternal grandparents would never visit for a long duration until I would threaten them in my childlike tone. A little similar yet different was the situation for my paternal grandmother. She wanted to come and spend time with us but couldn't do so as I had an aunt (differently-abled) who preferred staying at our uncle's home (where she was born) and considered that her home ONLY. I miss my grandparents a lot. While my paternal grandparents and the aunt are in heavenly abode, my maternal grandparents are too old to travel down to Chennai. I wish I can bring them here at least once. As I see the two grandmothers walking through my the neighbourhood, I am reminded of several such circumstances wherein, the joys of being with grandparents could have been realised by me. I befriended the two grandmother one fine ev...

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, when the urge to cook just fades away, I ended up scouting through Zomato's Delivery options in and around OMR, Chennai. After spending almost half an hour looking through menus of respective restaurants, their locations and home delivery options, I zeroed down on Velachery because that was only the area that had some decent restaurants, with a good menu overall in the offing. I was confused between two restaurants- Rock and Bhatinda Xpress- and finally, after consultation with a fellow foodie, living in Velachery and having tried almost all the restaurants in the area, I decided to order from Bhatinda Xpress. Bhatinda Xpress claims to serve authentic Punjabi dishes. Scanning through their menu was in itself quite a task and made me hungrier as I kept going from one page to other figuring out what to order. My fellow foodie and friend had provided me the phone number of the Restaurant owner. The owner was extremely polite and courteous in taking the ...

I have been an ardent fan of Sigree since the time a very dear friend of mine introduced me to this place. Back then, it was only at Nungambakkam. And, going till Nungambakkam all the way from OMR was always a painstaking task irrespective of a car or cab. Thus, my joy knew no bounds when I saw the board- SIGREE- on Adyar, months ago when this restaurant was in its final shape. Since its launch, I have been to this restaurant almost 5-6 times. Never have I been disappointed. On Friday afternoon,  as my husband and I were returning home after some work, we decided to stop over at Sigree for lunch. Though I wanted to try out a new place, my husband, who ain't that experimental with food, wanted to have normal "khana". As I got out of my car to handover the car keys for a valet parking, the parking person asked if I had reservation. I was a little surprised because this sort of a question usually came through in Barbeque Nation or such places. So we decided to head to the ...

What happens when you tune into a Hindi Radio channel after ages- in Chennai? You like all the songs, almost, being played on the channel. So what if the lyrics of those songs are simply berserk, or that the same songs are being played twice or sometimes thrice in  a day on various shows, or that you wouldn't listen to those songs unless otherwise being forced to. Yes, this is precisely what's happening with me for the past couple of weeks. It was one Friday morning, while driving from home to my new workplace, that I stumbled upon this Radio channel. The heavy-toned Salman Khan welcomed me- "Vannakam Chennai, You're listening to 94.3 Radio One." The channel, 94.3 Radio One - 100% Bollywood, 100% Chennai has gone for an overhaul, from what it seems to me. Though the very first day I assumed that it was probably just that period of time that the channel was going to play Hindi music; I was proven wrong when while driving back from office to home, I heard some mo...

Hi All, This post is more like an announcement to all of you. After weeks of brainstorming, I have decided (finally) that I would be writing a weekly post from the city I am currently living in. Yes, it would be about Chennai. Like it or not, the blog will be published on a weekly basis. I am yet to decide on the day, but it would mostly be either a Monday or a Friday. You must be wondering what difference does it make? I don't think anything great but yes it could surely make you see Chennai through the eyes of an outsider settled here. But it would purely be something I like, dislike, feel, see, observe, breathe, about this city- Chennai- where I have been settled for the past four and half years. And, like I say in every (job) interview that I attend- Whether I plan to move out of this city- I do not see any signs of moving out of this city in the coming years. When I had come down to Chennai, in October 2011, little did I know that I would end up staying here for so long...

All things haywire Not a single outcome Striving and selecting Choosing from the good or the bad. Life is following a rugged path Treading carefully Where to go Following a step at a time She reaches her destination Destination defined... Like what you read here? Don't Forget to Like Indelible Musings on Facebook

Disclaimer: I do not have pictures of the food because the food was just wiped off the plates, the moment it was served. Rest assured, the review is genuine and authentic like the food I had there.  Located on TTK Road, Benjarong has been on lists of 'Must try' places since long. So, when a dear friend of mine invited me over there for a Birthday lunch, I was not only happy to try this restaurant out but also happy at the fact that I was finally going to make it there. As you enter the restaurant, you are hit by an aroma that will for once make you feel you have stepped into a Thai Spa :D but then that is how probably they do the decor and fragrance in a restaurant that specialises in Thai food. The restaurant is well spaced out with elegant seating arrangements. (Sorry, if am being too generalist in the way I talk about the seating in a restaurant.) Overall, the ambiance has a relaxing appeal to it. As I and my friend waited for two of his other friends to arrive, we de...

The Kattaikkuttu Young Professionals, a theatre company based out of Punjarsantankal Village near Kanchipuram Town, set up and run by Kattaikkuttu Sangam, will be performing Draupadi Kuravanchi . The event has been scheduled from March 13-16 at Narada Gana Sabha Hall, Alwarpet, Chennai.  The event is being organised in collaboration with Shraddha ( www.shraddhatheatre.com ) and aims to showcase Kattaikkuttu in an urban setting and in a venue which normally chooses to host ‘classic’ art forms only. The team at Shraddha is trying to set a precedent for future performances of Kattaikkuttu in the urban sphere. They first saw Kattaikkuttu at a fundraising event and loved the energy from the young performers. They wanted to bring this unique experience to a wider urban audience in Chennai.   Kattaikkuttu is a traditional, highly intricate and raw form of physical theatre which uses song, dialogue, music, dance, make-up, costumes, drama and ritual. Performances are h...

I like on the table,  when we’re speaking,  the light of a bottle  of intelligent wine.   ~Pablo Neruda Are you a wine connoisseur? (And, you are a woman too) Then this event is for you. Tasting Pleasures, a gastronomical tasting program, is organizing Wine Wednesday, in spirit with the International Women's Day.  The event will include an interaction with Sommelier, Martine Isembrat and will be followed by a documentary on Sommeliers. Of course, the event will also have a tasting session where a wide variety of Indian as well as International wines will be served.  The event is taking place at Hyatt Regency, Teynampet, Chennai on March 11, 2015 from 7 p.m. onwards. What are you waiting for? Go grab your seats now!  Cheers to a shining evening filled with wine and dine.

I know I am a bit late in updating about this event, which happened on February 28th. The 10th anniversary celebration of Chennai Food Guide took place at The Westin, Velachery, Chennai on a Saturday night. The night was as expected filled with anecdotes from the food industry, the food group, and how it has evolved over the years, the whose who of the food industry in Chennai and also those who have made a mark and done some generous work by utilising their culinary skills to their best. The event began with a few introductory glances into the transformation of Chennai Food Guide from a social network group to a full-fledged platform where each member eats, breathes and talks only about food. The brainchild of Mohammad Ali, CFG has now taken another step towards a venture called The Food Consulate, where you will get to test, enhance, transform as well as share your culinary skills with a varied set of people. Going by the efforts that Mr Ali has put towards making CFG reach where ...

Yes, you guessed it right. Chennai Food Guide's 10th anniversary celebration is back. This time at THE WESTIN, Velachery. Now this has been one event, which for the past four years I had been trying to attend but couldn't. Blame it on the job and the days when the celebrations took place. However, this time, when I saw the CFG 10th Anniversary Celebration Invite on FB, I did not delay even for a while. I was quick to click on the "Buy Tickets Link" and reserve two tickets for my husband and I. Though my husband is definitely not the one who frequents CFG FB group as much as I do, I have some how managed to convince him to come and visit the celebrations with me.  I came across this group through a colleague cum friend from my previous office, F. And, buoy! I have never ventured out of the group since 2011. From reviews to discussions on food, recipes and gossip (on food of course), this platform was a blessing in disguise for a person like me, who had come...

I am back. I know it's been long. Though I had aimed for writing a different 99th post on my blog, it turns out that I have to probably write this one prior to the one I thought first. So, this post came to my mind today itself, while I was surfing through the Jan editions of the different travel magazines that I bought from one of my visits to Starmark in Chennai. My main aim was to see and think if I could generate any story ideas from these magazines. But as luck would have it, I ended up glancing at the magazines only a month later. While looking through the pages of these beautiful travel magazines, I was struck with a realization. That there are innumerable beautiful places on this planet for me to discover, the underlying reality behind the realization is that I do not know whether I would be able to do that in this birth or not. Forget the world, I am yet to explore my own country, which boasts of diverse cultural and historical important places which are explored by trave...

This will be my 89th post on my blog and 50th for the year 2014. Not bad. I wrote 50 posts this year. Now, I know I had promised myself and otherwise that I would write 30 poems for a period of one month in my "Keep Calm and Stay Positive" series; however, I have to break my own promise and end the series right here, right now. I conclude, it is not as easy as I thought it could be to write 30 poems in one go. You need more time and creative thinking to work in tandem with your imagination. I fell short of either of it once in a while. I did not want the poems to look more of forced writings, hence, decided to end it at   Day 17 . So, what would be my 50th post for the year 2014? I first thought I would go down memory lane. Revisiting the year that is going to end in just Eight more days. However, I have decided to write about it in my next post, possibly. I still have eight days to go to write about 2014. Let me take you through one Saturday evening, to be precise, Dec...

There are days when you are low. There are days when you don't know how to keep up with all the good things happening with you. Then there are days when both the high and low come together and in the end, what you get is a fulfilled day. Today is one such day for me. I had been feeling very low since morning. Then came a lady to meet me and my son. This lady is someone I met for the first time today. Until today, we had exchanged only a few or rather quite a lot chat messages/whatsapp messages and a few phone calls after I was back in Chennai. In fact, she was the first to call me after I returned.  Isn't it strange how people you hardly know, make you feel special in their own little ways?  This lady, I call her aunty but I would prefer to address her as 'this lady' in my blogpost for now. We accidentally became friends on Facebook. She must be in her sixties but has a heart of Twenty something. She looks old but her enthusiasm, nature, always ready to help sp...

Niharika was late for school today. Unlike other days, she dozed off moments after her alarm went off. Her mother finally woke her up from her dreams and asked her to get ready as soon as possible. It was quarter to 7 and her school bus would be here any minute. She walked up to the dining table where her father was reading the day's newspaper. She stood for a while looking at her father, whose eyes were glued on the front page of a leading daily. Realising that he would never look up, unless she made a move, she coughed a little to distract her father's attention. "Yes, my darling. You aren't ready yet? Isn't your school bus about to arrive?," said Sanjay Rao, Niharika's father. "Daddy, I was thinking if you could drop me to school today? Please?" said Niharika making a puppy face. "Well, that would require some bribe." "No Daddy. Taking bribe is an offence. Mam told us." "Oh yes sweetheart, it is. But a sweet little...

It's been quite some while since I wrote a blog post and what better to write about than "food"? :-D Now, I am not the one to try out new recipes and post them on the blog. I would rather eat those new recipes and just share the experience of how it was. As is suggested by the title of the post- yes, I am going to talk about "Haleem." For those of you who do not know, what Haleem is? You can read it here. The First Time I Tasted Haleem My tryst will Haleem dates back to my days in Hyderabad (2010). Though I stayed for hardly six months there, I was lucky that Ramzaan fell in one of those six months of my stay. I had heard a lot about the famous Pista House Haleem. Hence, I did try it out. But it wasn't actually the authentic one, I suppose. As the popularity of a restaurant/eatery grows, the "authentic" tag is often lost to the "not-so authentic" ones that mushroom in every nook and corner of the city. That's precisely what happ...

When it comes to profiles and interviews, I enjoy it to the core. So, without dilly-dallying much, I present to you through this blog post, an NGO named Arpan founded by two very close friends of mine- Sneha Thakur and Zeba Rizvi (hereafter, referred to as ST and ZR). You can read more about the NGO and these two lovely ladies on Arpan's website - arpanorganization.org (the link to which I couldn't manage to post in the blog, as the blogger was just not accepting it :-( ) I came up with this blog post mainly to present to you all the next event being organised by Arpan on August 2nd, at Kunzum Cafe, Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi. For details about what the event is about, here goes the poster- I spoke to these two ladies about their journey till now with their own venture. In this first profile/interview post of Indelible Musings, Zeba and Sneha open up about the birth of this idea, the obstacles they encountered, those very special moments that they witnessed everyday ...