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Related Post - Atrocity in a Metro City - Hyderabad   I haven’t had a decent cup of tea in a long time – the kind that refreshes you within seconds. Bhubaneswar has no dearth of tea stalls that do not shy in putting enough milk in the cup. However, the hot weather doesn’t allow one to drink as many cups of tea as one would have while living in Guwahati. After the third cup of the day, I feel nauseas. And when tea isn’t there to sweep you off your worries, everything else starts bothering you. When I first landed in the city last year in September I was impressed by how the cabs arrive just minutes after you’ve booked one, how the roads are free of potholes in the major parts of the city, how the highway helps me travel anywhere in twenty minutes even when I live a little outside of the main city. Perceptions do not take long to change and I am now often reminded of the quote in Sanskrit that says दूरस्थाः पर्वताः रम्याः – the hills look lovely but only from a ...

Everyone must have a different Utopia. And if I had a place in mine, it would be all filled with food and books and food and books, an occasionally a movie or two. When I was in my final year of Engineering in Guwahati, I “nurtured” the habit of going out to eat every day and for a movie, every alternate week. When I landed on Mumbai, to my utter delight I found that only a kilometer away stood the building of my dreams – the Movie Hall. No wonder, Saturday and Sunday evenings were spent watching the latest show in the Movie Complex. Eventually, some of my friends and I decided to go for a movie on every Friday evening, after office hours. Bookmyshow came into picture and hours were spent deciding on the perfect time to leave office and on reaching the place before the trailers are shown. As we realized we are spending a lot of money on our movie-affair we relied on discounts and coupons – early bird discounts at the hall and Rs. 50-100 off on CupoNation . Now that ten mo...

Published in the October 2013 issue of  Fried Eye “Punugulu,” she said and I considered it to be a joke. I asked her again the name of the food we were served for breakfast that day. And when my room-mate repeated the word, I realized she wasn’t kidding at all. I wasted no time to google up the word and find images of the food that looked exactly like what was on my plate. It’s been two weeks that I am in Hyderabad, yet I find it difficult to recognize the food I am served in my hostel. I was never a fan of South Indian cuisine and hence the ignorance. “Hyderabadi Biryani” is the first couple of words that come to one’s mind when one thinks of Hyderabad. Well, I don’t know of the adjective “Hyderabadi” but I sure had the Biryani in three or more places here and I can say that the Biryani served in Guwahati was different, if not better. These differ, everyone’s view points as well as everyone’s taste buds; and I, being a person who has a sweet tooth, have absolutely no...

Having spent almost 90 percent of my allowance in food (and the rest 10percent in travelling to and fro the food courts) and having being quite “famous” (or rather infamous) among my chums for my “appetite” I finally decide to share an important-to-me and may-be-funny-to-you lesson I have learnt in my years spent in harmony with my appetite. No matter how many mood swings I have had in my life, my “food-life” has never been boring. I have been to almost all the restaurants of Guwahati. I have even been to all the food courts near my area during my one-month stay at Delhi. At home, I open the door of the refrigerator every hour hoping for a miracle to occur and more food to appear, even after emptying the fridge of it. At times, I have had the amount of food that two adults can together have (and sometimes three). Well, that explains why I am so “healthy” (read: rotund). Gone are those days, when I used to tell my friends that calling someone “healthy” is a polite way of tell...

Attempt # 1 So, my resolution for the year 2011 was this easy – lose eating high cholesterol food, lose weight. And I celebrated the first day of the new year with cakes, chocolates and burgers (u may LOL, but this implies failure and failure actually hurts). Attempt # 2 So, on the second day of the year, I decided that the resolution was not easy to stick to and a new resolution is required (you may ask why, simple, it’s because everybody else has one). So, my new new-year resolution was to exercise daily, lose weight. Now, it was just a day ago that I broke a resolution so this time I had to stick to whatever I had declared to myself. But of course, I am not someone to begin the hard work from the very first day. Hence, “from tomorrow it is” I affirmed to myself. On the third day of the year, it was not until midnight that it occurred to me that I forgot to “inaugurate” my exercise routine that day. So, “from tomorrow it sure will be”. On the fourth day of the year I actu...