Years before being a foodie became fashionable, one of my former editors had rather grandiosely declared that there should be national awards for cookery like the Padma awards.

A salt and pepper chirwa beard, upturned moustaches, a blazing red safa with an elaborate diamond and emerald sarpech sitting atop grandly was how I recalled my great grandfather from his portrait.

Once en route to Tirupati from Bengaluru, I was completely fascinated by ghadas or pitchers in neon colours strung outside quaint village shops. I even bought one in fluorescent green and lugged it all the way back to Delhi, much to the amusement of my co-passengers who must have thought I was cuckoo in the head! What was interesting was that while the shape of the pitcher was traditional, the new-age material had rendered it more mobile and more durable.

While most people in the north have been complaining about the bitter cold, I have been revelling in it for many reasons — the major one being that I can wear my favourite fabrics, silk and pashmina. I wait for seven month for this weather and the only thing I have against it is that it gets over too soon and the endless wait begins yet again.

I must be one of the last of the dinosaurs who loves to watch the Republic Day parade in actuality on a purely voluntary basis — meaning I want to, and unlike netas and some officials who don’t have t

It all started when I happened to see a table-top created from wooden blocks that were earlier used for printing on cloth in Jaipur.

New years should start on high notes, but this time it was a tough start. Politics notwithstanding, what we saw at the level of the “aam janta” post the Delhi gangrape was nothing short of the beginning of a social revolution.

There is only one word to describe senior artist Sudip Roy’s work: Lyrical. The music is inherent in his works. If you listen carefully, you can hear it. The mastery that Roy has over his idiom is so perfect, so aesthetic, that it is like taking a walk into a veritable garden where his “journey” then becomes yours — for that is what it is.

It is said that butterflies come where there is purity. And the favourite perch of the pure butterfly is the flower. Creativity is like that: The perch of innocence. And what could be more befitting than a “wall” of flowers?

For almost half a decade I was actively involved in the development sector at the governmental level and it is my personal experience that we have several policies and programmes in place which if actually implemented, in both letter and spirit, can bring about a revolution of sorts and impact lives positively forever.