The not-so-secret diary

Just to be clear, there is absolutely no plan to turn this into a food blog. "Only" about 50 of my posts probably talk about food. However, as with any big city, socialising in London is synonymous with eating out. And never more so in the run-up to Christmas and New Year. Tonight was pizza night with group of London foodies. I must state at the onset that the organiser was wholly transparent in calling this a 'budget pizza place'. A stone's throw from Covent Garden in Central London, for £5 it would be difficult to find a cafe/ restaurant that has indoors seating and also does pizza. So full marks for that. Fewer marks though for the quality of pizza. Well, on the plus side it was big in size. Lots of stretchy cheese. A few pieces of mushroom and onion thrown in. A less than average base. Okay, you get the drift. I struggled with even the first slice.  It didn't help that I'd eaten a very late lunch so was not the slightest bit hungry. I wish the...

More than an year ago, an alternate view on the Taj was doing the rounds in the world of theatre. Based on a 1970s play written by London-based author Dilip Hiro (of Indian heritage?), a production was staged in, hold your breath, Gurgaon - a suburb of Delhi. If you believe the historians, Super-Rani Mumtaz was not only dazzlingly beautiful but also scarily smart, ambitious and powerful. The play adds some more fuel to this by surmising that she was much better at chess than Shah Jahan. After an intense game one day, this seems to have annoyed him enough to accidentally push her off the chair. The only shocking aspect here is that a  superior Urdu production of the play was premiered in that bastion of culture Gurgaon. Yes, really. And well-received it was. Rewinding five years ago, this was me : "Welcome to Gurgaon, the soul-less, American wannabe, consumer hub of north India". More recently my friends cried hoarse: "It's transforming. We have cool ...