Year: 2010

  • Smashing my way through Delhi Traffic

    Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of our drivers. So we are usually stuck – not unhappily for the most part but definitely stuck unless you have two drivers and we dont. This Sunday I had a lunch invitation and I knew my driver was busy and my husband and son away…

  • Pashan Garh Madhya Pradesh

    I have been meaning to write about this for a while but this is the right moment. The Chinese are celebrating the YEAR OF THE TIGER and I hope all of India joins in as there are only 1,411 left. We had booked a couple of days at a game park and were eager to…

  • India incredible, yes but also indifferent

    I was going to tell you about a wonderful tiger safari but I feel the need to write about two items of news today which I just feel are an example of why I cannot fathom this country and what makes it behave this way. This is a country which has so much going for…

  • A couple of shorties – Shoppers Stop and Stopping Stalkers

    This follows on from a previous blog where I complained about how slow service was in Shoppers Stop so I promised to give them another go and I did. Metropolitan Mall in Gurgaon, in to the store, found product, off to the till and out within a millisecond aaaaaaaah  The other shorty is this:For days now…

  • A salad of Seasons

    I never thought I would be sitting in India loving listening to the noise of the rain on metal outside. I never quite saw the monsoon this year and I suspect a lot of others feel the same way and since I have been here it has rained only once. Hence the “talcum powder traces” in…

  • The God of Small Things

    I have just finished reading for the second time Arundhati Roy’s disturbing and beautifully written book the “The God of Small Things”. She tackles many difficult issues in that book but it is her style that I want to talk about briefly today because her book is full of similes and distorted word spellings that…

  • Who said life was easy ?

    Who said life was easy ? I look all around me as I am being driven in my car to my preferred destination of exploring at leisure the seven cities of erstwhile Delhi and I am going over this in my head. I went to a talk yesterday directed to expat women and their ability or not…

  • Dabbawallas

    The Dabbawallahs of Mumbai are being studied as a business model and will be considered by students of the Harvard business school. I mentioned to you that Mumbai’s float of the Dabbawallahs was one of my favourites at the Republic Day parade – well it looks as if they are quite a remarkable and noteworthy…

  • India's future is its people

    It has been quite a week of celebrations in India full of pagentry, history, colour and contrast. My own tribute is to the people of this country who are so remarkably inventive, stoical and resourceful.This country’s strength is their sheer beauty and diversity and this blog entry celebrates them.

  • Beating Retreat 2010

    That is what troops did at sunset- they disengaged from battle, clocked off for the night, beat a retreat and so the tradition remains. In India this is done against the backdrop of the north and south blocks of Lutyens famous Rajpath and in the distance the Rashtrapati Bhavan the presidential palace. We sat at…