Saturdays With Shivani Recently I read a Facebook post that loosely read- A tightly scheduled day. Meetings till 8:30 pm but I got a call at 4 pm from my son. He wanted home baked pizza for dinner. Late dinner at 9:45 pm. Too short a time to bake from scratch, but I already had the base and toppings ready in my freezer and as he relished his margarita, he said “Dad, I prefer your pizzas any day to Dominos”. Bringing

A friend I recently met, mentioned about a café that she suggested we should try. While that hasn’t happened yet, the café’s name however is stuck in my head. JOMO- joy of missing out; isn’t that a perfect name for a café? In the pre-pandemic era, I fulfilled my dream of sipping coffee on lazy afternoons in Parisian cafés and watch the world go by so I am assuming JOMO would be my kind of place. More on that when

The courts told them to go away. They royally ignored and chose to come in droves. When the country and its administration sermonized that the protest sites were not for them, hordes of them flocked in to lay their claim on the space. Not only did these women claim, they owned that space. As we exchanged the mandatory ‘Happy Women’s Day’ messages and all those WhatsApp forwards that glorify women, these mighty women from our villages led the farmer protests

As children we’ve been in awe of our parents’ skills and sometimes intimidated too. Even if they had the intention of passing on that skill to us, quite a few would remember the pressure we were under. Recently an artist told me how she fears showing her paintings to her father who is an accomplished artist himself. I distinctly remember the mess I was when my father tried to teach me how to play the harmonium. The eight-year-old me fumbled

I often hear men say that this question baffles them. There have been bawdy, irritating jokes that periodically make rounds on WhatsApp groups. The emojis in response are irritating but also an interesting peek into social psyche. Men ‘nudge knowingly’, ‘wink’ or ‘laugh’ openly while women ‘smile’ politely, some squirm and a few ignore. The eternal question however remains unanswered partly because men often don’t ask or if they do, they don’t listen. Contrary to what the commercials show or

My timeline is flooded with two kinds of posts from India- the farmer protests and the vaccination drive. I have been losing sleep over the former and pray that sanity wins eventually and peace prevails. Rab raakha, in God’s hands, as I often say is the only thought that keeps me calm. Posts of the latter kind however bring me hope and joy. While here we wait for the vaccine to arrive, in India, my friends, colleagues and other healthcare

In the frenzied world of food fads and diet plans that we live in, the wisest words that have stayed with me, almost like a talisman, are— Eat local. Eat seasonal. When I moved to Mumbai and explored the traditional foods, I included more millets as a substitute for my staple wheat, ditched my beloved basmati rice for the local variety and such smaller changes. Every winter I crave for the winter veggies like turnip and cauliflower. Even though cauliflower

Last week when I was writing an article about online libraries in India, I got to speak to some of the individuals who are running them on their own steam. The experience was thoroughly enjoyable and it was refreshing to hear from them that their reader base has been expanding since inception. COVID was a challenge but due to the restrictions, children ended up upgrading their skills and more joined their ilk. In the writer circles that I now move

In my career in a teaching hospital, my job involved working with 18 to 25-year-olds who were pursuing their MBBS or MD. These were bright, young students; the crème de la crème as they say; considering they were pursuing medicine in one of the premier institutes of our country. I used to enjoy interacting with them so many a time our discussions would go beyond the realm of curriculum. As bright as they were, some them would appear lost. They

As our family of three hugged and wish each other a happy new year at midnight, my daughter’s first words were, “Hum bach gaye. We survived. We made it.” Three simple words but they carry the gist of this year in them. This can be interpreted on so many levels. Going by the tone and emotion in her voice, this is what I concluded. There was a huge sigh of relief tinged with a bit of sadness. Was it survivor’s