Loosely inspired from Pasta Primavera

The saga of my invention test with penne pasta. This desi version was derived from Pioneer Woman's Pasta Primavera.

Mom and I were doing Diwali shopping at the supermarket when I found a shelf of pasta. My last search for any pasta in this place had proved unfruitful so spotting a packet of penne pasta, one of my favourite kind, led to a quick grab.

Baby steps of my food photography

After a long soak, this blog is ready to sizzle. I am armed with a spatula and a camera, along with my trusty laptop. The next week would have posts about my cooking and its pictures. How did I go from being a multipurpose, could-be writer to food photographer and cook? The cook part is because the sous chef at home is on leave for a week, so it’ll be me manning the kitchen. The food photography has a more interesting story. 

My interest in food started dating my passion for photography during a Visual Communication class, in last September. Their lovechild is less than a year old now. She uttered her first word in January, it was of course garble, but it sounded so sweet to me: 

The next baby-book milestone was when she started walking on her knees: 

6 Lessons from the Man Who Drives Harley Davidson

Here are six lessons from today's guest session with Anoop Prakash, MD of Harley Davidson India. While we've had many corporate leaders as guest speakers at Young India Fellowship, Anoop stands out as he has worked in the US Marine Corps and been a part of the Bush Administration. Anoop was born in the US, studied at Stanford and Harvard Business School and has had a diverse career before moving to India in 2009. He put together his life-lessons for us as six bullet points. 

Purpose of your job matters

As most of YIF fellows are at the cusp of choosing their careers, Anoop outlined what is it that he looks for, every time he changes jobs. The name of the company and the job title doesn't matter but what matters is what is your purpose in the job and who is your boss.

Gandhi but not Gandhi 1.1

I wrote about the Gandhi dream in my last post. This is a continuation of that dream.

From Ritwik’s tutorial, my brain moved to Gandhi talking to a villager in Sabarmati Ashram. Gandhi was passionately describing his concept of an ideal village. The villager then asked Gandhi that why doesn’t he take another tour and spend more time in villages this time.

Gandhi but not Gandhi 1.0

I knew Gandhi wrote a lot but I did not realise that every scrap of paper he wrote on, is preserved. I was reading some texts for the course Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity when I came across this website that has a collection of his letters. These are not just political letters or letters published publicly by Gandhi, these are everyday letters to his sons, Ashram dwellers, and so on. When there is so much material available in his own lucid words, Gandhi should be an easy to understand figure. Alas, that is not to be. He was a prolific thinker and kept grappling with his experiments with truth until the end. 65 years after his death, the reader’s quest is to wade through numerous pages to grasp the essence of what Gandhi said.

I have been so engulfed in Gandhi’s writings that they are cropping up in my dreams now. In last night’s dream, I kept trying to figure out where Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj ideas got sidelined by his larger-than-life image of ‘Bapu’.

Swimming in Ideas

When I saw the course Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity on YIFP curriculum, I expected it to be an extension of Makers of Modern India by Rudrangshu Mukherjee. Gandhi was the only leader whom we did not discuss in that course so I was looking forward to a story-telling of Gandhi’s life and reading some of his writings. Critique of modernity was a phrase for me that did not go beyond what Gandhi wrote in Hind Swaraj. Coming from a non-social science background, my only introduction to such movements has been through Gil Harris and Anunaya Choubey in their courses on Shakespeare and Art Appreciation respectively. So here’s how the cloud of ideas has influenced me so far, where the pivot is learning about modernity.

I am an economist and an engineer by training, so rational thought is like the core of my being. It is surprising that while championing rationality, I never stopped to define or explore what rationality is.