Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 108
October 28, 2016
Today in Photo
Part two of my Diwali Presents To Self. From a buy one get one free sale. I'm a sucker for ikat in all its many shades and forms and this has really been the Year of Ikat in fashion, whether boutique or ready to wear. This messenger bag therefore was a no brainer. Also since I have no denim jacket, I bought this biker one, which is a very soft denim, almost chambray. Bought it in a large so it'll fit over sweaters and it's also thin enough to be the perfect travel jacket, ie, when I go back to Goa this December. Both from a new website I was trying out: Ajio. #stuffibought #delhidiary #sales
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October 27, 2016
Today in Photo
Diwali season is also sales EVERYWHERE season and I've been buying myself little treats. Nothing to break the bank, but things that make me happy. The first of my haul is here. Today's theme: cat lady. Clockwise from left: white t shirt with a black cat embossed in felt, heart ♥ earrings and three mix and match earrings for when I'm not feeling conventional. All off Myntra. #sales #stuffibought #catlady
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October 26, 2016
Today in Photo
The best lunches are old friend lunches when you have your own shorthand and the best Bloody Marys in town. #delhidiary
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October 25, 2016
Today in Photo
So excited about watching the Bolshoi Ballet soloists performance of The Nutcracker today in Siri Fort. Half of the city is here, and it's times like these that you really appreciate Delhi. Plus all for free if you were fast enough to get the passes advertised in the newspaper. Excuse the far away photo, my phone camera isn't good enough to get details from afar. Up next: act two and the Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy. #ballet #thenutcracker #delhidiary
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October 24, 2016
Today in Photo
An old favourite, Bulbul Sharma's My Sainted Aunts is everything I love about a family memoir. Short funny stories of various members of Sharma's extended family, from a child bride to a girl who hates school to the 75 year old widow who travelled to England for the first time, the stories are sweet and bring all the aunts to life vividly. Makes me think of my own extended family and what I could weave from their life stories. Read! #bookstagram
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Stringy cheese and the taste of childhood: On Nirula's and the 1990s
An NRI aunt came to visit us in Delhi after a long time. This particular aunt used to come to our home all the time back in the 80s and 90s, accompanied by my two cousins, and we always had a routine we adhered to. She had to hit up all her favourite eating spots—Hyderabad, where my mother's extended family lives was great for the home-cooked meal, but not so much with the eating out options—and what my aunt wanted was Indian food, your daal makhani, seekh kebabs and naan and Indian Chinese food. If they didn't have American chop suey on the menu, she did not want to go there, no matter how “fine dining” it may have been.
Well, lucky for us, her hosts, back in the day we had a one-stop shop we could take her to and keep us three kids happy as well. Nirula's was the answer to “shall we go out and eat tonight?” or where I went for my very first outing with friends from school—Jurassic Parkand our pooled money going into pizza for after.
This is the very same pizza I order some weekends to chase away that gloomy Sunday night feeling. The weekend is over, you've probably had to much to drink the past few days, this is also the day your maid doesn't come to work, so you're sitting in your unmade bed, having watched television till the light outside your curtains turns from bright to dark. And there you are in your flat, still in your pajamas, with all the lights off because you haven't turned them on yet, and what could be a better pick-me-up than some nostalgia food from a simpler time? I guess that's one of the nice things about living in a city you also spent your childhood in. Nostalgia is always just around the corner. The pizza itself is not as spectacular as any of the fancy new delivery-only gourmet pizza places that have popped up all over the city, but the stringiness of the cheese, the crispness of the capsicum, the rubbery give of the mutton sausage, the weird in-between crust—they're all incredibly more-ish, even though that description makes it sound supremely unappetising.
I may have also had a weird anthromorphised crush on Michelangelo
Some people went for hot chocolate fudge (abbreviated coolly to HCF) but my heart belonged to that very underrated menu item—the ice cream soda. Vanilla ice cream, a squirt of the syrup in the flavour you wanted and topped off with foaming club soda, it was everything you wanted in a drink anddessert.
What my aunt wanted—which was to eat like she was in the 1980s again---we could no longer provide for her in 2016 though. There are about a zillion places to eat out in Delhi, but Pot Pourri, the “fancy” salad bar with paper placemats and table service has vanished. And definitely RIP the Chinese Room, with its dim lighting and crispy noodles and sweet corn soup with bits of shredded chicken swimming in a thick broth, which you spiced up using the vinegar on the table, thoughtfully scattered through with marinated green chillis.
What's going to happen to Nirula's then? One more piece of our past is breaking off, only to be glimpsed sometimes as “quick service” at petrol pumps, hospitals or the highway. And the last time I ordered pizza from there, my partner looked at me quizzically. “Really? This is the pizza you wanted?” he asked, as I tore open the mustard packets and added strategic dots of the condiment to my slice. It really wasn't the pizza I wanted though—that pizza is still stuck in 1989, when none of my family felt like eating “home food” and we went on an excursion to Connaught Place, placed our order at the counter, and the bubbles from the ice cream soda tickled my nose.
Well, lucky for us, her hosts, back in the day we had a one-stop shop we could take her to and keep us three kids happy as well. Nirula's was the answer to “shall we go out and eat tonight?” or where I went for my very first outing with friends from school—Jurassic Parkand our pooled money going into pizza for after.
This is the very same pizza I order some weekends to chase away that gloomy Sunday night feeling. The weekend is over, you've probably had to much to drink the past few days, this is also the day your maid doesn't come to work, so you're sitting in your unmade bed, having watched television till the light outside your curtains turns from bright to dark. And there you are in your flat, still in your pajamas, with all the lights off because you haven't turned them on yet, and what could be a better pick-me-up than some nostalgia food from a simpler time? I guess that's one of the nice things about living in a city you also spent your childhood in. Nostalgia is always just around the corner. The pizza itself is not as spectacular as any of the fancy new delivery-only gourmet pizza places that have popped up all over the city, but the stringiness of the cheese, the crispness of the capsicum, the rubbery give of the mutton sausage, the weird in-between crust—they're all incredibly more-ish, even though that description makes it sound supremely unappetising.
I may have also had a weird anthromorphised crush on MichelangeloSome people went for hot chocolate fudge (abbreviated coolly to HCF) but my heart belonged to that very underrated menu item—the ice cream soda. Vanilla ice cream, a squirt of the syrup in the flavour you wanted and topped off with foaming club soda, it was everything you wanted in a drink anddessert.
What my aunt wanted—which was to eat like she was in the 1980s again---we could no longer provide for her in 2016 though. There are about a zillion places to eat out in Delhi, but Pot Pourri, the “fancy” salad bar with paper placemats and table service has vanished. And definitely RIP the Chinese Room, with its dim lighting and crispy noodles and sweet corn soup with bits of shredded chicken swimming in a thick broth, which you spiced up using the vinegar on the table, thoughtfully scattered through with marinated green chillis.
What's going to happen to Nirula's then? One more piece of our past is breaking off, only to be glimpsed sometimes as “quick service” at petrol pumps, hospitals or the highway. And the last time I ordered pizza from there, my partner looked at me quizzically. “Really? This is the pizza you wanted?” he asked, as I tore open the mustard packets and added strategic dots of the condiment to my slice. It really wasn't the pizza I wanted though—that pizza is still stuck in 1989, when none of my family felt like eating “home food” and we went on an excursion to Connaught Place, placed our order at the counter, and the bubbles from the ice cream soda tickled my nose.
October 22, 2016
Today in Photo
Sometimes you're in the kitchen, minding your own business, warming up dinner and you look up at four paws and the sleepy innocent face of a cat who knows he's not supposed to be there but is so cute no one is going to yell at him. (also I can't reach) #catsagram #bruno
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October 19, 2016
Today in Photo
Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. 15 years after a laser surgery on my left eye to correct my vision, I've been getting headaches and blurry vision. I put it down to too much computer use, but got my eyes tested at a mall recently and yup, I need glasses again. An anniversary present from K, I'm quite into these hipster frames. #dorktastic
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October 18, 2016
Today in Photo
Nostalgia is a yellow hardback book from the 80s, the peak of Soviet literature for children available in English translation in India. The books were cheap, well made and often wonderfully told. The Adventures of Dennis stands the test of time, it's still a really good kids book, full of small, loving observations of life from a child's view. My copy has been read and reread so many times since I acquired it in the late 80s but the pages are still crisp and the binding is firm and flipping through it all these years later, I'm still charmed by the stories of Dennis, who never really had any "real" adventures, but lived and played in Moscow much like I did in New Delhi. Also excellent (and a book I have lost, alas) is When Daddy Was A Little Boy, a book I absolutely ADORED. #bookstagram #1980s #kidlit #soviet
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October 16, 2016
Today in Photo
Five years of being delighted in each other's company. Not five years of SK making donkey ears behind us. Photo by a kind friend from K's birthday party this June. #anniversary
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