Food glorious food

Some of my fondest memories have an element of food attached to them. In fact I have managed to find a food angle to some of my disastrous memories as well. Is it any wonder when one of my favourite quotes perfectly captures two of my favourite pastimes – eating and thinking:

“Indian thought while valuing thought also values food. Food is nourisher, healer as well as happiness provider. Thought maybe god but food is the goddess. One cannot exist without the other.” Sita, Devdutt Patnaik

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10 things that happen when you’re on the wrong side of 25

The first time you’re told you are ‘now an adult’ is probably when you turn 16. By the time you’re 18, you are so ready to leave the word ‘child’ behind and step into the mesmerizing world of adulthood. When you hit 21 you realize what a mirage adulthood is and you secretly start to wish you were back in school. You cannot believe the problems that had felt insurmountable to you back then feel uncomplicated when compared to what you’re dealing with now (like which shampoo to buy or what is a good detergent).

It isn’t until you turn 26 that it suddenly hits you that okay now you’re definitely an adult. It’s like a switch that goes on and anyone younger whether by a year or five starts to feel tedious and too energetic. It it here that you realize you are now only going to get older and not younger. And to celebrate, here are 10 more such epiphanies:

10 things that happen when you work from home

So I have been working from home – freelancing – or as I like to call it – working – for about 2 years now. If you translate this into real-time, it means I am just about floating thanks to the generosity of a lot of people.

If you are blinded by the rosy picture of working from home, let me present to you the flip side so you can make an informed decision. Unless you’re like me who doesn’t care what other people have to say about how difficult it can be and would rather find it out for yourself and then later curse why you couldn’t have just listened to the blog post that was trying to save you from yourself, then go ahead and skip this.

Here goes nothing:

And it was that simple – #AtoZChallenge Reflections 2018

If there is a genre that I adore after Fantasy it is Crime Thrillers. I love detective novels, I love mysteries and I absolutely love conspiracies, spies and fast paced thrillers. I have always wanted to write a similarly fast paced story but I always got caught up in the details: how does law and order work, what happens when someone is murdered, how does a police interrogation work…the amount of research into making a plausible story was so daunting that I would give up even before beginning.

Starting from zero

It had been a fortnight since Radha had lost his best friends. He couldn’t really blame Mayur for not wanting to be his friend – he would probably have done the same thing had he been in his position – but that did not stop him from regretting how things had turned out.

Blaming you

The news that Sagar had been the culprit behind all the pranks that had wreaked havoc in school in the past 4 months spread like wildfire. Nobody could believe that the imbecile Sagar had it in him to pull off pranks like he had. Some were impressed. Some were disgusted. Some proclaimed, loudly, that they had always known that something was off with the dude.

Suspect X

The truth hit Radha like a freight train. For a moment he reveled in the sweet pleasure of a deserving adversary. But slowly he realized the horror of what had transpired – the scale of it, the attention to detail, the singular focus on destruction. But he couldn’t put a finger on why – what had he done to Chandra that she would do this to him? And to involve his best friend…her brother…it was too fantastical for him to be able wrap his head around it.

Pop goes the weasel

Now that Radha had figured Sagar had something to do with the events of the past three months, it was like a bee in his bonnet. He couldn’t stop thinking about it but at the same time he didn’t know what to do either. He didn’t have enough evidence apart from a strong gut feeling. Times like these he wished Mr. Holmes was real so he could go to the detective and pick his brain on how to gather evidence.

Vengeful fury

A hot summer afternoon. A nondescript school day filled with number crunching, essay writing and listening to your Hindi and English teachers lament on the hopelessness of teaching thirteen year old students who did not appreciate the languages.

It is a truth universally acknowledged

Restlessness had now permeated Mayur and Sagar. Where before they simply tolerated being called Watson and Timothy, they hadn’t known a time would come where they would miss being their alter-egos. Since Radha had taken the decision to not pursue the prankster, he had also stopped the detective play. They were back to being thirteen year old boys who passed their time doing nothing of import.