Pinku-Enchanted Life

Winters do something to me. While others get swaddled in layers upon layers of woolens I cherish the cold and welcome it. It makes all my dormant desires come alive. I want to experience new things, touch forbidden territories and create new road maps where none existed. It also makes me impatient. It makes me strain against all that binds me. I find it difficult to keep my head down and slog on as I usually do. The need to step off the highway of life and smell the flowers, turn the leaves becomes very strong. So strong in fact that at times it scares me. Winters are when I want to travel, explore and be curious. Winters are when I want to discard the old and try on the new. It’s as if my soul flirts with everything, unwilling to bind itself, unwilling to settle down. Narcissus, my favorite flowers are ones that can be seen at Delhi florists for a very short while during winters and their ephemeral fragrance haunts me. My biggest joy is to spot a bunch of thes...

Partying till midnight on a Sunday is bad news for Monday. Especially when the Monday has back to back meetings planned. More so when the said Monday also happens to be your sixth anniversary. Waking up with a hangover and groaning out of bed, we went about getting chores done, the fact that the day is also our anniversary and should be special nagging at the back of our minds.Managed to get through the long day somehow and finally at 9 in the evening we ventured out to have dinner and thus mark the passage of this landmark in our relationship.  ITC's WelcomHotel happens to be really close to our place so we thought of checking out what eats it has to offer. By the time its your sixth anniversary the idea of doing something special gets heavily tinged with the idea of 'Special within comfort zone'. The property was earlier a Lebua hotel that was taken over by ITC. Walking in we found the hotel getting ready for Christmas celebrations and that is something which always cheer...

Six years is a long time. Long enough for the polish to rub off. Long enough for the passion to dwindle. Long enough for the family (mom, dad, dog, baby) to take precedence over the partner. Long enough to also make you sometimes wonder, ‘what did I see in this person back then?’ Six years mean you have shared causes, holidays, books, taxes, burdens, friends, costs, relatives, dreams and blame as well. Six years mean you still have shared causes, holidays, books, taxes, burdens, friends, costs, relatives, dreams and blame as well to get through. Six years mean you have come a long enough way to be able to think of newly weds as ‘those newly weds’ Six years is also a long time to get so used to each others eccentricities that they don’t seem so anymore Six years mean …you have seven and eight and nine and ten to look forward to. At least I do.

Dwarka where I live is a big sub city populated by middle to high income families from almost all over India. So it really surprises me why the place has so few 'swear by' eateries to boast of. Every time I think of having a meal to remember, I have to head for South or Central Delhi or towards Gurgaon which in the past few years has come up with quite a few note worthy places. While I do so my hunt for worth mentioning places in Dwarka continue and as often as I can, I try checking out new places in an attempt to figure out nice options within the sub city. One such attempt had led me to Baba Ganooosh - a small eatery in the sector 11 market which had an interesting name. I walked in to find that true to name they do serve Lebanese dishes and hummus, falafal, shwarma, labneh etc were all on the menu. Though limited demand meant the owner who had been a chef in Saudi Arabia had to also offer Chinese and Indian dishes to sustain. Happily I ordered two Shwarma rolls as takeaway a...

For Diwali this year we planned that we would attempt to make sweets at home instead of buying ready made.  Now the partner is the one with a sweet tooth and I only nibble at sweets once in a while. My one weakness however is the rasmalai.  I can have 3-4 of those lovelies and for someone who as a rule doesn't eat sweets, that's a lot. So it was decided that we will make rasmalai as it would be a pity if the maker herself wasn't inclined to eat.  I got out my recipe notes and pulled out my trusted rasmalai recipe.  It iis fairly simple and the only real concern is the timing for taking it off the gas, as over heating tends to break the balls.  This is what you need for it: 2 Litre full cream milk 1 cup sugar - as I mentioned I don't have much of a sweet tooth so this quantity works for  Blanched pistachios and almonds cut into small slivers - half a cup Half a cup cream Few strands of saffron 1 cup milk powder 1 tablespoon all purpose flour/ maida 1/2 teasp...

During graduation one of our texts was D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and in it we were frequently told how an oven and baking as an essential part of a kitchen in the early 20 th century was a very powerful allegory. It stood for the whole act of giving birth and shaping a child. It seemed all too far fetched to me back then. All those lessons came back yesterday when I and Aarini attended a cake mixing event at The Park. Both of  us were pretty excited about this outing, as it was only about her and me and I had promised her there would be lots of ‘ happy birthday ’ her word for cakes. It was a pleasant October morning neither too hot nor cold and we set out on our long drive to The Park in the center of town from our home on the south western fringes of Delhi. Aarini had a lot of questions about the red bus, green bus and blue bus that we spotted on the way which needed answering. Every small thing evokes a question in her and I try my best to give her an answer that’s not far...

Yummy sweet fritters which are good as snacks if a sweet tooth runs in your family or as an unusual dessert. How to make it? Half kg sweet potato, boiled and peeled. Half cup grated coconut. Half cup sugar. Half cup suji. Half cup white oil. 5-6 green elaichi. A tablespoon each of crush kaju and kishmish. Mash the sweet potato well with the kaju, kishmish, grated coconut, sugar and suji. Add powdered elaichi powder. Leave the mix in the fridge for about an hour. Heat the oil in a kadhai, using your palm and fingers shape the sweet. Keep water in a bowl handy to help you with this. Having wet hands ensures the mixture doesn't act to sticky. Fry them carefully on medium flame. Let one side fry to a golden brown only then turn the sweet, this will ensure it doesn't break while turning. You can serve hot or at room temperature. Enjoy!!