I had to admit, when 2022 began I wanted it cancelled already. I had valid reasons for it. When I thought COVID-19 was behind us, the third wave began. Just when I thought that we are out of COVID-19 woods, our entire family was down with the Omicron variant. Though the virus itself wasn’t life threatening,…
Category: Random musings
2021: Yet another year of surviving the pandemic
When I wrote my year-end blog at the end of 2020, I wondered if there would be another year, where just surviving would take as much precedence as this. Then I proceeded to say, “Maybe not.” I could not have been more wrong. As far as a year goes, 2021 was worse, way worse, than 2020.
Coronavirus diaries | Eating my way through the pandemic
One of the best things that happened during the pandemic was getting back to cooking, which I used to love. From trying North Indian dishes to Korean pancakes, I have spent more time in the kitchen over weekends in the last few weeks than over the last one year. There were lot of dishes that…
What happened to the once popular never ending game Temple Run?
I was killing boredom with a game of Temple Run 2 at the dawn of another boring day. I ran. I ran further. I kept on running. I crossed the rivers and hopped over the obstacles. Rewards were plenty and dangers bountiful. There were narrow lanes and fire coughing mountains, giggling rivers and dangling emeralds…
Coup d’état, small town style!
It was 9 PM. Men and women in groups of three and four were whispering in a remote village in a district in rural Tamil Nadu. After an interval, of say 15-20 min, a person from one group would move to the other to keep them abreast of the discussion, again in a whisper. That…
2020: A year like no other and surviving the pandemic
There cannot be a better cliche than – “A year that was”. It is cheesy, said way too often and well, people fall for it every time, myself included. But I cannot help feel nostalgic when a year ends. So I end up writing a reflection of the year gone by as a new year…
Aadi perukku by the river, once upon a time in Nagercoil
Ramu could still hear the river Pazhayar burbling its way through this small settlement near its bank in Nagercoil, where he grew up. Nagercoil is a small town in the Southern tip of India, Kanyakumari. Few feet from the river bank is a Shiva temple that he frequented after bathing in the river. A little…
No Filter: The inside story of Instagram by Sarah Frier is a page turner
Really late to this Instagram book party, but I finally completed Sarah Frier’s brilliant book on Instagram, ‘No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram’. I loved it, like I would love any book that is pacy and addictive. And No filter totally was. For, I did not enjoy it as a mere reader but as…
Coronavirus diaries: A case of suicide in Nagercoil, Kanyakumari
Panchavadi. It is the name of a place. My grandmother says it was where Lord Rama, Seetha and Lakshmana stayed before Seetha was abducted by Ravana. It also refers to a place that has five auspicious trees. In Nagercoil, the name refers to the complex with five houses. They have been there as long as…
COVID-19 diaries: Living to tell the tale amid the pandemic in 2020
I would have never thought in March, when I had come to Chennai from Bengaluru, that I would be stuck here for five long months. I was supposed to be here for two weeks, till my sister’s wedding. My train tickets to Bengaluru were booked on March 31 right after her reception (The wedding was…
So I began to bake cakes!
On a summery Sunday morning around 8 am, as I stood before the neighbourhood Supermarket in a Chennai suburb, in what seemed to be a very long queue, I decided to bake. It was one of impulse. For I never wanted to before. In fact, I dismissed the thoughts outright. My aversion (at least initially)…
Moving cities, new jobs and growing up
It has been over three months since I blogged. For someone who has been blogging regularly for two years, even when there is not much to, it really has been a long time. Even if I had been writing till November, it was hardly just one blog post since July 2018 compared to four or…
A journalist's diary 