Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Bazaar in Gurgaon

The Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Development Corporation is holidng a bazaar at the open grounds near IFFCO chowk in Gurgaon from the 20th to the 30th of March. (11am-9pm)

A lot of the sub stalls from Poompuhar (the TN state Emporium in Delhi) are selling their wares at 10%-50% discount. There's co-optex, some semi precious gems, Tanjore paintings, brass work, furniture and a host of other items on offer. There was a sari stall which had some "different designs" - not co-optex - but the stall owner was nowhere to be found :(

There's a lot of non Tamilian handicrafts too. Egyptian paintings, bamboo craft etc.

Worth a look only if you are looking for something specific or want to shop in semi-open-air

Red Moon Bakery

Finally, I have found a bit of heaven in Delhi. Even if it is located in Sarita Vihar.

I first had a taste of their brownies at Godrej Nature Basket which I found extremely addictive. And then I saw the sub branding of Red Moon Bakery. A foodie on a quest was I. If this bakery could make such amazing brownies, what other goodies did they have to offer?

So, I turned to my trusted friend, google.in and found their website, facebook fan page and an ADDRESS!
Red Moon Bakery
Shop #32,
Local Shopping Complex
Pocket D and E
Sarita Vihar
New Delhi, 110 076
011 4053 4797

 It was a little tough to locate, but once I was in the right community market within Sarita Vihar (I visited 3 before I found the D/E Market), I just had to follow my nose from the parking lot.

The premises are tiny, but the goodies on offer are better than those, from many a 5 star coffee shop/pattiserrie.

The bakery was started and operated by a Canadian couple - David and Anna Hambly and has some unique items which are not yet available in other city bakeries.


Looking at the prices here, I realised that GNB has a slight mark up on each item, which I wouldn't mind if it meant avoiding the drive from this side of town to Sarita Vihar. But Red Moon Cafe does offer delivery service to most parts of the city on different days of the week, provided you bill at least 400/-

The husband loves their mutli grain bread (60Rs) loaf. They will slice it for you to your desired thickness for 5rs extra. I highly recommend that as the bread is so soft, it crumbles when you try to slice it at home. Regular brown bread is 45Rs. They have a host of flavored Bagels, pitas, buns and breads.

I picked up a chicken curry pocket(50Rs) and a Chicken Pot pie(50Rs). Loved the pocket, its a complete tea time snack for one, the pot pie had a little too much potato for me, or maybe it was just the piece that I picked up.

The rum balls(20Rs) are a mouthful of sin! Highly highly recommended. I've already mentioned that I'm a huge fan of their walnut brownies(30Rs) which are much darker than any I have eaten before.

The cupcakes are 30Rs, I found the butter icing a bit too much for me, but my cat loved it :) and I'm sure most kids would too. Its just a little too much sugar for me on top of a cupcake, but that's just me.

Their muffins are 30Rs and the carrot bran is supposed to be a healthy one. The piece I bought, has been reserved for breakfast in the morning.

Lots of cookies in the 100-150rs range for a dozen. I have loved the chocolate chunk and the chocolate gingerbread.

I have a few other goodies that I picked up today, that I have had to force myself to stay away from. The temptation is quite over powering though.

They also have birthday cakes, cheesecakes and others from 6" to 14" (600gms - 4kg) which you can order ahead.

I'm definitely going to be ordering from them pretty often. They also deliver upto Gurgaon.

Penguin Spring Fever - Trickster City

Today was a fitting finale to the Penguin Spring Fever celebrations. This evenings program encapsulated everything that the festival stood for. The theme for this finale was  - Discover the uniqueness of Delhi
To start off the evening, was the recent release "Trickster City". Shveta Sarda is the translator of this unique anthology whose stories have been written by a group of 20 somethings who live in neighbourhoods like LNJP colony, Dakshinapuri and Sawda-Ghevra in Delhi. What is unique about this collection is that it gives voices to stories which otherwise may have just been statistics in a social workers register. Neelofar, one of the writers and Shveta alternated reading passages from the book in English and Hindi and had the audience spellbound. I've read some of the stories from the book (they are short stories) and will review it when I'm done. But this is definitely a must-read.

Sam Miller then read an excerpt from his last years release "Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity". Sam Miller was a BBC correspondent in Delhi in the early 1990's. He has returned and lived in Delhi since 2002. His book is more about Delhi as seen through his eyes while he walked about the city.

William Dalrymple, then read from his novels set in Delhi. "City of Djinns" and "The Last Mughal" effectively tying up the Delhi of Millers book to the Delhi portrayed in Mahmood Farooqui's upcoming book. What can I say about him? He is an author who always has his audience eating out of the palm of his hand!

 


The last reading for the day was by Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain from Mahmoood's yet to be released "Besieged: Voices from Delhi 1857" It was a pleasure to see the two of them in action again. Its been almost 4 years since I last saw them perform in Bombay. While todays reading was not half as flamboyant, (You have to try and watch a Dastangoi performance at least once in your lifetime, they are next performing in Pune on April 12th) it was very illuminating. Mahmood has been researching papers at the National Archives and his book attempts to explain 1857 through the voices of the common man rather than the parroted lines in History text books. The book is a collection of translations of letters of various people during the time of the uprising and seige on Delhi. There are letters from butchers, hawaldars, thanedars and the like. We could have listened to the 2 of them all night.

The audience who had foregone the IPL, Liverpool-ManU & Navroze celebrations, to be here, was completely spell bound.

A beautiful end to the evening was the 2 hour Qawwali performance by the Nizami Brothers. Ghulam Sabir and Ghulam Waris. They performed the traditional qawwals and sang about national unity and integration among other traditional themes.

Listening to a performance like this can truly put you into a spiritual trance if you stop trying to control your mind, close your eyes and just go with the flow. the little kids who are training to be qawwalis gave us a short performance and there was so much potential there. The eldest of the 3 boys already has remarkable control over his voice for his age and they are sure to take this performance art further.

Wonderful evening, beautiful memories. Waiting for the next literature festival now.

Penguin Spring Fever - Thank God It’s Friday!

It was advertised as an evening of fun and music and it certainly delivered what it promised.

The live band was awesome! They played old English numbers, that you rarely get to hear nowadays except in some peoples homes. It took me back to my childhood impromptu singalongs whenever friends and family got together.

Some senior members in the crowd took the lead and hit the dancefloor prompting the younger ones to join in too.

Absolut had sponsored the evening. What a time to be off alcohol :( LOL. But it was fun with just a glass of Pepsi too.

Penguin Spring Fever - Advance Booking

Today was a different kind of an evening at the Penguin Spring Fever. 2 theater personalities read out sections from yet to be released Penguin Books.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel; Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna and Jimmy, the Terrorist by Omair Ahmad.

The crowd was way thinner than last Sunday and  Monday. I guess that was because there were no authors around.

I had hoped that even though the previews were to be read out by theater personalities (something they really should have done last Monday for the Metro Reads) the authors would be around to discuss their work. A lot of people seemed to have the same idea, because once they realised that there were no authors around, a major portion of the meager crowd also left.

The actors were doing a good job of reading out sections of the novels, but the main reason people go to a Literature event is to hear the authors talk about their thought process and interact with them.If its just a reading, I might as well wait for the book to be released and read it in the comfort of my home.

"One Amazing Thing" sounded interesting and I think I will pick this one up. I left after the "Beatrice & Virgil" reading as it was already quite late. (Today for the first time, they started late. Were they hoping / waiting for more people to arrive?) So I missed the third and fourth books. But then I guess I'll just decide whether or not to buy them, the normal way I browse for books.

Fun Foods @ Godrej Nature Basket

My friend Rushina who is an excellent chef and writes wonderful articles on food, is also a food consultant to Godrej Nature Basket in Bombay. She was in town for the press launch of GNB in Delhi and invited me to meet her at the store.

The staff there pretty much recognises me, because I've already shopped there thrice in the 10 days since they opened and on my first day there I spent 2 whole hours in the store, caressing the jars and bottles of various goodies. On that day, I did not want to stand out by taking any pictures inside the store. (little did I know that my attention to detail was also making me stand out) But today was perfectly ok as it seemed like everyone was taking pictures.

Packaged Food

Fresh Vegetables

Breads and Cakes

Rushina had cooked up some really interesting amuse bouche to showcase the ingredients that are sold by the store and they were really tasty too. I was getting a chance to meet her after 4 years, so it was a fun conversation between foodies plus I got the chance to meet more foodies from Delhi.

Leaving you with pictures of some of her treats.

It was a truly delectable evening :)

Penguin Spring Fever - Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese by Sidin Vadukut

The crowd today was half as much as yesterday, but that was to be expected given that today was a working day and its difficult for working professionals to reach a venue by 7pm unless they work next door (such are the problems of Corporate Life)


90% of the audience was there to hear Sidin Vadukut speak. Sidin has been blogging at http://www.whatay.com/ since over 6 years and has enough of a regular following for his brand of humor, that Penguin gave him a book deal.  Dork is the result of that deal. Sidin promises part 2 and 3 will be out soon and he was sure there was scope for many more.





Unfortunately before we got to hear what most of us had come for,  we were faced with a Marketing disaster from Penguin. Penguin has started a new series called Metro Reads. This has been widely covered in the papers. They are short novellas that can be read anywhere (or on the metro) and the media buzz around it was enough to make us curious to check out the books in a store.

Since Penguin is also selling some of its books on location @ IHC, we flipped through some of them and were still considering whether we should pick one up, among the other 15 books that we bought today. But since we weren't convinced about them, we decided to wait to hear the authors speak before buying any of them.

Story writing and story narrating are 2 entirely different skill sets. Unfortunately the 3 authors chosen from the Metro Reads section weren't very good narrators when they read out excerpts from their books and they lost the audience attention almost immediately. People were talking, texting and tweeting as long as these authors spoke. It was very telling that when the floor was opened to questions, NOT A SINGLE person had a question to ask.

Basic rule of marketing: do not put people in the floodlights if they are not yet ready to handle it. As the publishers, Penguin does have a responsibility of giving ample coverage to their authors, but the authors also must be equipped to handle this coverage. It is easy to say that they are first time authors, they will learn on the job, but I've seen secondary school students with more confidence and conviction when speaking in public.

Fortunately once that was out of the way, Sidin and Vinay took center stage and then it was a laugh a minute. Including when the author insisted that "Einstein" Varghese was a visionary who should share shelf space with others of his ilk like Bhagwan Rajneesh and Nandan Nilekani and the guy at the sales counter, promptly complied.

There was a lot of audience interaction even during their conversation and even more so when the floor was opened for questions, with audience directing questions @ Sidin and Robin and sometimes both, so we got to see a bit of MPD on stage :)

The book is really funny and anyone who has been to a B-School will truly appreciate the humor. But it will still be an extremely funny read for anyone who has ever held a corporate job. As Sidin said, every office has its share of psychos.

Penguin Spring Fever - Kal, Aaj aur Kal - Writings on the Mahabharata

Penguin India is currently conducting a festival of Literature at the IHC. Penguin India started 23 years ago (Penguin is 75 years old) and has since then become the publisher of choice that most Indian authors aspire to.

This festival which is a celebration of the 75th anniversary is a chance for the public to interact with its well known and budding authors.

The 14th of March saw Gurcharan Das, Namita Gokhale, Shashi Tharoor and Bibek Debroy meet for a discussion on Kal, Aaj aur Kal - Writings on the Mahabharata.

Gurcharan Das has written "The Difficulty of Being Good - On the Subtle art of Dharma, Namita Gokhale has written a childrens edition of the Mahabharatha in 40,000 words. Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel is a series of stories of modern day India running parallel with stories in the Mahabharatha and Bibek Debroy is half way through writing the first complete English translation of the Mahabharatha by an Indian.

Bibek's endeavour is to try and present the situations and decisions and actions in a context relevant to its times. For eg: he says that Dushasan baring his left thigh and asking Draupadi to sit on it, isnt as vulgar as interpreted today by the baring of his flesh. To put it in context of those times, the left thigh was reserved for the wife and the right thigh for the daughter or child. So while it was a vulgar invitation to be his "wife" it isn't as vulgar as it is currently interpreted.

Given the context of the recent "Women's Reservation Bill", the discussion started with the role and power of female characters in the Mahabharatha. Draupadi's polyandry, Kunti's sons with fathers other than her husband, Gandhari's decision to blindfold herself were all brought into consideration.

The conversation then moved onto the concept of dharma and Gurcharan Das illuminated the audience on how the concept of dharma had changed across the ages. Including as recently as the 19th century, when the Christian missionaries landed in Calcutta and equated religion with Dharma.

The audience questioned the role of Krishna as a God and if the authors in the panel believed in the divinity of Krishna and if they beleived that he was divine then the question was raised as to why he allowed the massive war and destruction to take place. Gurcharan Das narrated 2 incidents to clarify this. He spoke of Krishna meeting an ascetic in the Rajasthan desert after the Kurukshetra war was fought, who asked the same question. Krishna replied that it was not something that he could control, bringing into play the role of destiny.

In another incident Krishna is believed to have replied that it was time to rid the world of the kshatriyas who were creating havoc and destruction on earth.

An audience member asked how the panel could say that women were empowered in the Mahabharatha when Kunti felt compelled to relinquish her eldest born son and not claim him as her own through all the shame he was put through, until matters came to a head with the possibility of her valiant eldest son fighting against all her other children.

There were two different points of view on this matter. The first was that while having a child out of wedlock was acceptable for a married woman in those times, it may not have been so for an unmarried girl. The second was that Kunti simply panicked. She used a mantra whose power she didn't completely believe in and the consequences made her panic and these caused her subsequent actions. And later when she saw Karna it was too late to publicly accept him as her own.

All the authors had a depth of knowledge of their subject and the audience could have listened forever. Looking forward to more such illuminating discussions in this week.

Godrej Nature Basket opens in Delhi!

 

I've been so envious of my friends in Bombay for their easy access to Godrej Nature Basket stores, that I was very excited when they opened their first Delhi outlet 2 days ago.

With its lack of Quality Supermarkets, I felt compelled to drive all the way to Gurgaon for my one-stop shopping. I visited Godrej Nature Basketat Defence Colony yesterday, and came away impressed and elated that I now have some place nearby to pick up all my consumable kitchen needs.

The first outlet is located at D-15, Defence Colony (Between BP Petrol Pump & Def Col Flyover) Ph:+91-11-4669-8777 and they promise to open soon in M Block Market, GK II.

The Def Col store is split across 2 levels and is quite spacious for a store in this area. There are baked goods, cheese (imported), fresh vegetables, cold cuts, meat, ready to cook meat products and imported ingredients from across the world. The advantage of Godrej Nature Basket over my other favorite food store in Delhi, "Le Marche in DLF Promenade Mall" is that prices are much more reasonable and locally sourced ingredients cost almost the same as it would in the market, without the hassle of bargaining.

There are lots of shop assistants who are very helpful with bagging, tasting and carrying your groceries around the store (if this is what suits you, I prefer pushing my own trolley) without being over-pushy.

Since they had just opened a day before, they said that there would soon be more items in stock. The shop assistants encourage you to taste the cheese and cold cuts before buying. The fresh cold meats were really good and I did pick up, quite a few varieties. My favorite would be the spicy chorizo. Slices are cut while you wait to your desired thickness.

Plenty of Italian and South East Asian cooking ingredients are available across multiple brands and price points. They also deliver within a 3 km radius.

They stock Haagen Daaz and London Dairy ice cream too. The next time I visit, I will have to carry my insulated bag with me to bring home some ice creams.

I loved the cleanliness and layout of the store as much as I loved the range of products and brands. The air conditioning was working well and the whole experience was pleasurable.

The only 2 problems I faced were : billing was slow as the cashiers were double checking every bar code entry vs the result that popped up. I hope this is just an initial teething problem. The second problem is not really their fault, but because of compliance issues, they can only bag products in paper bags which are a pain in the b&!! to manage when buying in large quantities.

Holi

Holi is the festival of colors. It heralds the arrival of spring and commemorates the victory of good over evil. There are a lot of mythological stories about why it is celebrated.

It is more of a North Indian celebration and hence I was introduced to it a few years ago when I headed North to study. Although it is now celebrated all over the country.

Holi was historically the festival of the masses and on a social level it allowed the various classes to mix more freely than normal social customs allowed.

It is most commonly celebrated by throwing or applying colors (gulal) on each other. Either in the form of powdered colors or color mixed into water and sprayed using a contraption called a "pichkaari" or just buckets of colored water being dumped on unsuspecting people.

Historically the colors were made from natural flower petals, fruits of certain trees, leaves, bark etc. A lot of the colors were made from trees/plants with ayurvedic properties that helped strengthen immunity against diseases caused by the change in seasons.

In the past few decades, commercially made colors have proliferated which take a few days to get the stains out of skin, hair, clothes, floors and have harmful chemicals that are bad for the skin and the flora and fauna when they get into the eco system.

In the last few years, there has been a small but growing movement to move back to Natural colors. But they are currently much more expensive to buy and nobody has the time to make them at home anymore.

There are other versions of holi where it is played with flowers and petals and there is one version celebrated in a small town in India where the women have an opportunity to beat up the men with sticks and the men have just a small shield to protect themselves.