Year: 2012

  • Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012

    Have you noticed how fast the restaurant scene is changing in Delhi ? Whereas a number of years ago most restaurants were attached to the big hotels this is no longer the case and Delhi is alive with restaurants serving a variety of tastes and spices to titillate the most demanding palate. And Zomato ( lovely…

  • Vikram Seth at Bookwise

    There are a few places in Delhi that I love with a passion and Bookwise is one of them. This is a wonderful bookshop full of quality books, bestsellers, art and history, coffee table books and tasteful stationary run by a lovely couple Aarti and Somesh whose hearts are definitely in the written word. Even well known…

  • Toilets top job for Bollywood Actress

    In my blog a few days ago I mentioned that Bollywood is entering its 100th year. It has gotten off to an excellent start in my eyes. How do you make toilets sexy, how do people learn that dealing with human excreta is fundamental to India’s development ? This basic need has to be addressed not behind the…

  • Interpreting Tagore

    The Astad Deboo Dance Foundation gave a stunning performance last night with a vibrant group of young dancers from Salaam Baalak Trust. I went along as this is the charity that I work for and support here in India and I am only sorry that you could not share the wonderful spectacle we saw. What…

  • And we are off ….

    The work to renovate and refurbish Rose Home has started in earnest as of yesterday – this will undoubtedly occupy a lot of my waking and sleeping time in the next few weeks but Adam and I have only been able to move this forward because we have had some incredibly generous donations from friends and corporates…

  • Child rearing in India

    I am going to give you two examples, both widespread, but clearly there are others in between. The one is a wealthy middle class family with three children. The family has four servants for the children alone, one child, the youngest, has two as he is a handful and needs ayas on a shift basis.…

  • Bollywood's Birthday

     April 21st 1913 was the date that Dadasaheb Phalke featured his film “Raja Harishchandra” at the Olympia Theatre in Mumbai. This was the first truly indian feature film produced. Today Bollywood enters its 100th year and marks a moment when festivities, awards, commemorations and nostalgia will all take centre stage on the Bollywood scene. There was no looking…

  • Marriages are made in Heaven

    “In a thousand different ways God guides us through our lives .Who we marry is all up to Him. But there is nothing to stop us from lending Him a hand by filling the form below” This is the wonderful heading to a Times of India advertisement for its Matrimonial Pages which caught my eye.…

  • Something about my thinking space

    There is something about my thinking space which seems to attract all types of creatures.Distractions of a different kind that is for sure.  So while I was sitting at my desk this morning I felt a little tickling on my right foot. Silly fly I thought and looked down to shoo it away and found this…

  • Walking T

    I get more upset these days if I dont walk T then T does – she is getting old and is a little arthritic and sometimes I push her to go on a walk but invariably when we do it is always a smaller or greater walk of discovery. Yesterday was a greater one in…