Gingee fort – called by the British as the “Troy of the East” is a majestic fort located in the state of Tamil Nadu. We chanced upon it on our road trip from Bangalore to Pondicherry. Setting off from Bangalore by 9:00 am, we reached the town of Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu by 1:00 pm…
Pondicherry & Mahabalipuram by road …🚙💨 the Itinerary⛱
Puja holidays are finally here 💃. Standing in Bangalore, we look around, where can we go? There is Kerala and Goa on the west coast – been there; within Karnataka there is Mysore – been there; Wayanad and Coorg – been there; hill stations of Coonnor, Ootty – been there too. It’s time to venture…
Mahabalipuram: Getting a makeover for the VIP visit…and the Chinese connection
Mahabalipuram, 55 km from Chennai, situated on the east coast of the Indian peninsula, along the shores of the Bay of Bengal; this little town is seeing an unaccustomed flurry of people – security personnel, media, landscape workers. The residents are used to the tourists, both local and foreign – it’s a weekend getaway for the…
Robo Advisors to help you meet your financial goals…🤖
If you are a Preferred, Priority or Premier customer at a bank, you get a Relationship Manager, else you get the Call Center. Similarly depending on your investible surplus now either you can avail a Robo Advisor or an actual human Investment Advisor. But apparently people are quite happy with the Robo Advisor as seen…
Making changes 📝🦋
Addicted to the notification bell. Checking stats on the blog many times a day has become a nasty habit. There were many such compulsions I have come out of, only to land in new ones. Maybe I was able to come out of the prior ones, because I got into new forms of digital addictions…
Easy Indian meal (Set #7)🐟and a fish tale📖
“Following Fish” by Samanth Subramanian……what search terms do you need to enter into Amazon to throw up such a book? 🤔Any guesses?? It’s not a collection of recipes on fish; it’s not a Moby Dick nor a Finding Nemo kind of a story. It’s a travelogue as the author traverses along the coast of the…
The Titan saga⌚️📖
“The Tatas would never be allowed to make watches as this sector was reserved for public and small-scale industries.” said the license raj prevailing in the country. But they did and made it a resounding success….how? That journey is detailed in the book by Vinay Kamath – TITAN – Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand. Titan…
What is your Titan story ?⌚️💎
“When you buy the jewellery, can I have the Tanishq box?”😊 I remember one of my ex-colleague’s remarks about Tanishq jewellery. The burgundy jewellery box is pretty and the jewellery – absolutely gorgeous. The jewellery designs Tanishq produces are beautiful and each piece is assured to earn its wearer a compliment. You can’t escape the attention…
On this Onam Occasion…🌸🌼
Last week was Onam in Kerala; to be exact Wednesday 11, Sep was the Thiruvonam day. Schools close for a week; office goers combine the Muharram holiday on 10 Sep, Tuesday, Sree Narayana Guru Jayanthi on 13 Sep, Friday and the 2nd Saturday on 14 Sep and make it a week long celebration too !! There were…
The Grand Indian Equity Sale – Buy ideas📝
2018 was rocking year; I travelled to 4 countries and within India visited 5 new cities. And it was not just for me, 2018 was euphoric for people, companies, markets; there was optimism and feel good all around. And it’s during these trips that I began to notice the range of colourful, smart suitcases and…
vahan.co: WhatsApp your way to a job📱
Our heroes most of the time hail from the three broad categories – sports, cinema and industry. I would call entrepreneurs as true heroes simply because of the jobs they create. Here’s an entrepreneurial venture providing a recruitment gateway for blue-collar workers. To make it super easy, recruitment happens over WhatsApp chats. The main recruiters on…
Karen Anand and Gambas Pil Pil👩🏻🍳
This is a very old book; I remember spying it in the bookshop and at that time I had not heard of Karen Anand. I leafed through the book, because of comments behind the book by known celebrities and after reading a few lines, I wanted to devour the book and also get myself something…
Investing in smallcase 🤑₹
Smallcase is an investment idea in the Indian equity market – to put it simply, a combination of the mutual fund concept and a stock systematic investment plan (sip). I have been doing both separately for sometime and now will try the smallcase way. As I mentioned in the prior post on smallcase, the investors buy…
Teachers’ Day👩🏫📚
The kid was just learning to answer subjective questions in his third language class. There were spelling mistakes in every other word in the answer; even in the words that were in the question itself. I tried to help him saying that it’s just like Fill in the Blanks; half the answer is already there…
Choco Gulab jamuns at Punjab Grill 😋🍗
And I thought the Gulab Jamuns couldn’t get any better… yet again I have been proved wrong !!🙆♀️ Weekend lunch out, I wanted to visit the Forum Shantiniketan mall. Situated in Whitefield, it’s 45 min away from my home, so might as well call it a one day trip. First time at this mall and…
Notes from an American trail 🌇🗽
An American sojourn; traversing the breadth of the country for nearly a month, waking up every two days in a new place, sampling and feasting on new experiences or maybe revisiting old memories. The author has previously lived in the US for a while and now visiting the country after a long hiatus; sharing a page…
The Little Book on Pondicherry 📚🌺
Last October we were on road from Bekal in Kasargode district of Kerala to Kochi. Hubs announces that we will be passing through Pondicherry on our drive. I was skeptical, Pondicherry is nowhere enroute to Kochi, it’s on the other side of the Indian peninsula, facing the Bay of Bengal and we were on the…
The Lipstick Index💄💋
Another interesting term for the current times😀. Not once, but I read this in the papers twice…hence thought worth a mention. Sadly, it’s not a listing of the most popular lipsticks in the world; though it does seem like a good idea to have one !! The term was coined by Leonard Lauder, former chairman…
Nightscape 🏙🌙
Bangalore now feels like the Bangalore of yore, at least in terms of the climate; days are cool, sun is warm and welcomed; nights are cold, sometimes rainy. I tried the nightscape mode on my phone and got a pic of our neighbours. A well lit hive !! 🏙 Encouraged with the results, I try…
TapChief – A Freelancer platform👥
Unicorns, Soonicorns and Unicorpses – the first is familiar but the other two have me stumped. Unicorn in business parlance is the term for a new business with a billion dollar valuation. Soonicorns are unicorns in waiting😀 and Unicorpses were unicorns once, but now they are way below the billion dollar mark. Good to know😊…
