Terrace grown radish sambar + homemade ghee from ayurvedically massaged cows + rice, carrot/beans/grated coconut and brined babymango
Coriander thokku rice, Malabar nut spinach (Aduthoda or “goat repellent”) koottu, slowly and deliberately fried and mildly charred ivy gourd (purely a personal preference)
Coconut Thuvayal (grated coconut + red chillies + urad dal + asafoetida + tamarind + oil + salt + proletarian revolution) mixed rice, Gothsu (sysadmin wearing black lipstick) and Kohlrabi/carrot
Madras shallot Sambar rice & Ceylon (Pasalai) keerai paruppu usili and brined babymango in a new (smaller portion size) bento box whose tagline is a quintessentially Japanese “Rice is Beautiful”
Vatthakuzhambu + rice + ghee, ladies finger, cabbage and onion thuvayal and brined babymango
This year, there’s a good chance that (some of) your parents or grandparents have been furiously reaching out to “experts” on WhatsApp, YouTube and TV to find out if Pongal/Makar Sankranti was to be celebrated on Jan 14 or Jan 15.
The confusion stems from the fact that this year, the Sun enters the zodiac sign of Capricorn in the afternoon of the 14th, and since people like to celebrate their festivals in the morning, some “experts” have been recommending celebrating Pongal on the 15th
At this point, people who believed that they were born with the sun sign of Capricorn are going “Eh? What do you mean the sun is casually ambling into Capricorn on Jan 14th afternoon? I was born on Jan 4 and was told I’m Capricorn!"
If it wasn’t already evident, the south and east are largely meat eating while the north and west are significantly vegetarian
Rice + Meat is the most common dish pattern, not surprising because it’s either easy to make at scale (biriyani) or with great speed (fried rice) and packs a full meal in a single dish
I’ve done my fair share of business negotiations, but nothing could have prepared me to parlay with a thuggish rhesus monkey who stole my spectacles at the Jakhoo temple in Shimla earlier today. I was, rather fortuitously, helped by an imposing alpha male monkey
If you are wondering how on earth I managed to enlist the services of a large monkey to retrieve my spectacles, I will have to tell you the whole story, but since I’m currently trekking to see the Chadwick falls, this will have to wait till my phone gets connectivity
It all started with this guy. More precisely, because I was not able to reach this guy. Vodafone’s service in Shimla is best described as the exact opposite of the Shammi Kapoor song “bar bar dekho” because no bars are to be seen in most parts of the city.
What connects the customary late afternoon/early evening rain in Bengaluru and the Nepenthes fly-trapping pitcher plant? It’s Madagascar. Intrigued? Thread...
Around 120 million years ago, the Indian landmass parted ways with the Antarctic and Australian landmass. And around 88 million years ago, a giant underwater volcanic eruption called the Marion hotspot occurred, and it went on for 2 million years.
What is today the Western Ghats in India was originally a wider mountain range that literally split down the middle like a zipper during this eruption and this is how Madagascar separated from the Indian landmass.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher and accomplished orator who was amputated and beheaded on the orders of Mark Antony for his scathing criticism and opposition against the man.
But before his hands and head were non-consensually separated from his body, he authored a work on ethics titled "De finibus bonorum et malorum" ("On the ends of good and evil”) in 45 BCE.
"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..." is the English translation of an excerpt from that work.