The not-so-secret diary

Feel massively proud that India has launched a successful Mars mission on its first try. Some cool statistics show that : a)The ISRO scientists took just three years from inception to successful launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission (aka MOM). b) It cost India just $74 million to launch the Mangalyaan (literally Mars Craft). This is a fraction of the cost that it has taken three others (Russia, USA and Europe) to do the same. c) India is also the first country to have launched it successfully on its first attempt. Yippee! d) There has been a fun twitter chat between the US Mars Rover Curiosity and the Indian Mars Orbiter as they acknowledged each other. e) Last interesting anecdote: It cost $100 million to make the Hollywood space movie 'Gravity'.    Jai Ho!

I may have come five years later than everyone else but I like to think that, like seasoned wine, Dishoom's food is tastier now than it was at the start. So I heard all about yet another new Indian restaurant in town a few years ago. It was styled along an old Bombay cafe. Funnily enough I was about to re-locate to Mumbai just around then (and that's also the time when i started this blog). So needless to say, visiting a Mumbai-style restaurant in London was not high priority! When back in London after my short India-stint, I felt sated enough for about a year to keep away from desi food hang outs. But last year was a turning point in more ways than one and I found myself making more rotis/ paranthas in a month than I'd done in a decade.  In my quest to avoid this weekly grind, scouting for good Indian restaurants became a temporary past-time. It was finally a cousin and a friend who dragged me to Dishoom for afternoon tea, leaving me hooked (perhaps for life) to t...

In fact they are better than the best. Walking along one of my most favourite parts of town, the South Bank in London, I saw the little van parked just past Riverside Wharf (west of Blackfriars). I know it's been there for some time (a few months? a whole year?) and I've always managed to walk past it without slowing my stride. On this day, the sky was slightly overcast, there was a post-rain chilliness in the air and a light wind was blowing. Aided by the wind, the fragrance of freshly baked donuts wafted across the pathway, bumping lightly on the tall heads of passing tourists and heading right into my tiny nostrils. My feet carried me, in a zombie-like state, to the little van where a nice lady was scooping a fresh lot of mini-doughnuts out of her large pan. I asked for £2 worth. She smiled and put some in a bag. Now I must state that I'm not a crazy doughnut fan. I usually find them too sweet and give up after having a quarter. But these mini donuts were bite-siz...