Day 1 of the lockdown🗓… There are two shops in our vicinity for grocery shopping. One was closed. As we approached the second one there were a large number of cars parked near it, but the shop’s shutters were down and a group of people were standing outside with carry bags. People were waiting for…
A booming business amidst the lockdown 💻
The kid’s classes are scheduled to begin in the first week of April and it doesn’t seem like it will. Then the institute came up with the plan to conduct online classes. But do we have the infrastructure for that? And that’s when I first heard about the Zoom app. As per the institute’s instructions,…
Weary with the greens, try magenta 💕: Beetroot and carrot thoran 🥕(Kerala)
Missing the cold lunches in office? Or realising what you have been missing all these days? Hot meals🍲 !! Food always tastes better hot and now we have the luxury of eating hot meals straight off the stove; let’s make the most of it. We have not been able to buy fresh meat and fish the…
Cutting through the clutter: Oaktree Memos 🍀
Howard Marks is the co-founder of the investment management firm in the US called Oaktree Capital Management. He is an author on financial markets, his most famous book being Mastering the Market Cycle. He is also a guru to many investment managers around the globe. He dispenses his thoughts and views on the financial markets…
Collateral Damage 👫
“Why can’t you take some responsibility?” wow…that’s crystal clear and it came from one of the adjacent flats. I am not eavesdropping😇; I was at my kitchen sink washing dishes. I could always hear pots and plates being noisily moved about in the nearby flats’ kitchens but I have never been able to catch a…
21 days ‼️
…lockdown for the whole country, starting Tuesday mid-night, the PM announced yesterday. People took sometime to digest the news. Though drastic, everyone knows it is necessary to prevent a contagion. After accepting this, next thought is do we have enough supplies to get us going for the next 21 days? And this is where the…
Easy Indian meal (Set #9): Easy and delicious Chicken Stew 🍲
The best thing about Chicken stew, it’s a one pot dish; can be devoured with any sort of bread; rich in taste; plus easy to make. One of the upsides of getting married was my mom-in-law’s cooking. She always made something special for us when we were visiting her home during the weekends. And on…
Monday mayhem🌤
We needed to buy some groceries and drinking water. In Bangalore, we buy the drinking water; the tap water here is hard water. So in case of any lockdown, drinking water is the highest on the list to stock up. While moving to Bangalore, one of the major decisions is whether to be buying the…
Easy Indian meal (Set #8): Kerala Fish biryani 🍚
Is it just me or is anyone else facing the predicament that by the time breakfast and lunch are done and dishes washed, it’s time to start the dinner preparations😬!? The work does not stop! The mornings are noiseless, pleasant and cool. Our day starts late, but that doesn’t translate to cutting back on the…
Care for the hard-working hands🙋♀️
With the house in full attendance and my maid on leave till things cool down, the quantum of housework has increased. Though the washing machine is a household standard, we do not own a dishwasher. And as advised, we are currently on an overdrive in washing our hands more often than ever and liberal in…
Mango Showers : [2] A Pleasant Surprise 🌧
The day was hot as usual but come evening it suddenly became very cool, looks like it is going to rain; but we haven’t seen rain for sometime now. And soon it did, started as drizzle and then the clouds burst open in a heavy downpour🌧; it lasted maybe for 5 to 8 minutes only….
Precaution or paranoia : The debate draws on 🙅♀️
The first casualty of the kid’s endeavour to make an omelette is the pepper bottle. “It slipped from my hand !” he said as he was attempting to season the egg in the frying pan. Sheesh…more work for me🤦♀️. The glass splintered and the pepper scattered on the floor. I asked my maid to take leave…
Mango Showers : [1] A Summer salad 🥗
If I have to name one colour representing the month of March, it has to be yellow. Yellow for summer and sun☀️; yellow for the mangoes that turn from green to gold this time of the year. Promptly close to mid-March, a cardboard box arrives home. We were waiting for this !! The moment we hear the…
Weaving magic from the mundane 🌺: The Weight Loss Club by Devapriya Roy 📖
The first book I read of the author Devapriya Roy is “Friends from College”. I loved the story and her writing style so much that I wanted to read more of her books. And so ended up ordering from Amazon her second book “The Weight Loss Club”. The colourful artwork on the book’s cover is more…
So far, so good🌤
Kids’ board exams just got over, he is happy and we are thankful. The exams went on as per schedule with masks and hand sanitisers allowed in the exam hall. All the schools have long been shut, only the board exams are being conducted. There were smiles of relief and joy on faces of kids…
Profit from panic: The MakeMyTrip strategy✈️
How is that a company listed on NASDAQ in US does not have an email id on their website for customer complaints ? Difficult to digest, right? But this is the case with the online travel company MakeMyTrip. Their answer is a customer support link that lets you cancel or re-schedule an existing booking; but where…
The waiting game
The weather in Bangalore is hot and dry. It feels uncomfortable, we would much prefer some humidity to the dryness. Considering the efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, all schools, malls, theatres have been closed. Kids and spouses are at home. It seems to be the prefect time to take-off together for a holiday somewhere….
Delightfully Ikea 🏵
Ikea – the organising haven😊. It was a bit surprising that bypassing the metros like Mumbai and Delhi, Ikea chose Hyderabad to open it’s first store in the country. For outsiders like me, Hyderabad just received another tourist attraction. The aisles for storage are usually never visible to the customer in any shop, but in…
Sale❗️in the Indian equity markets📉
Are we witnessing a black swan event? The news headlines from US read “Dow Dives 1,900 Points, NYSE Halts Trading As Stock Indexes Plummet”. At home, the benchmark index, the BSE Sensex fell over 2300 points intraday, to recover some ground and close with a fall of 1,941.67 points (5.17%) – the biggest one day fall ever !!…
Mulling over millet 🌾
Millet is regarded as the new super food and there is lot of print devoted to its recent resurgence. Quinoa had a similar following sometime back. I have not tried quinoa yet, so any chance of my encounter with millet also remains bleak. We are what people call a two grain household – rice and…
