Pinku-Enchanted Life

The virtual world has given me many friends. Some whom I have met and others who continue to hold my hand and heart over internet connections. Most of my virtual friends came through blogging. Years back when I first started penning down my thoughts on this blog and someone would come along and empathize, criticize or generally comment. My happiness and thrill knew no bounds. With time some of those visitors became friends and while writing you almost wrote for them. You knew which line would elicit a smile from whom, you also knew which friend would frown and tell you to take a re-look at whatever it was you were discussing. Not meeting these people, never seeing them didnt dampen spirits at all. Infact the fact that they were faceless, distant at time gave you the courage to discuss many a n intimate issue you would rather not discuss with real friends for fear of being judged or worse still bitched about in the immediate circle. Over the years I have had the chance to meet ...

A trip to Oh! Calcutta  is usually greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by the team at work. So today was no different when on a whim I asked a colleague to join me for lunch at the Nehru Place restaurant.   Oh Calcutta the specialty restaurant with multiple awards won over many years is a name that almost all gourmets in the city recognize instantly. We walked in hoping, nay assuming that good times lay ahead of us. A hilsa /eelish festival was on there,though we didnt see anyone ordering the same. Most patrons chose to stay with the buffet spread and having had decent food the past few times, we too chose to stay with it too. I tried the Dal shorba and found that while it was nice - it did taste suspiciously close to the kind of dal we have at home with alu bhaaja and saada bhaat  (rice). They also had alu matar tikis and chicken cutlets for starters.we tried the cutlets - they were ok - just about. The main course had fish pa...

The perks of being a senior is being able to Boss around and get people to do the things you want them to. For the past month I have had three starry eye interns working in the team. Good kids with some smart ideas. It has meant a lot of lively chatter in office, squeals at lunch time and not to mention the entire male workforce looking smart, talking smart and working smart all in an effort to impress the youngsters. Two of the kids finished their internship and were getting back to college and since all of them have been curious about Aarini and Buttercup I thought it would be nice to have them all over at my place. The bunch arrived diligently on Sunday afternoon bearing very pretty gifts for me and Aarini. And I like the true Boss told them that they have to eat a pure Bengali lunch and no one can pass over anything. Everything on the plate has to be finished only then the next course would be served. (Told you there are perks of being the Boss) The bunch consisted of: Suman - fro...

It was a lazy Sunday. It was a really lazy Sunday. So lazy infact that we couldn’t get ourselves to don some proper clothes and go out to the market to pick up some onions. However lazy or not a Sunday lunch minus non-veg was not a possibility, so I thought maybe I could do something about the chicken in the freezer which would not involve onion and therefore not necessitate going out. Started out with de-freezing the chicken (by now you must be wondering what kind of a household has chicken but no onion. But well that’s the way we are.) While the chicken thawed I looked around at my spices wondering which ones could come up with an acceptable concoction. I wanted to eat it with parathas so it had to taste desi, couldn’t try any continental or oriental options. I settled for a recipe I had heard for mutton when its cooked for Ma Kali. The format demands that no onion or garlic be used since its part of the ‘bhog’ for Ma. Marinated the chicken with curd, cumin powder, salt, ginger powd...