A few weeks ago, I was stocking up on victuals at our local green grocer’s, which goes by the grandiose name of Veerabhadra Vegetables. Veerabhadra Vegetables is by no means a mean place – on the main road from Kothaguda to Miyapur, its location opposite Shilpa Park gives it a strategic advantage that the grocer has turned into an excuse for the most alarming (to outsiders) Nawabi attitude. It is also this that endears him to all his customers, me included. Wasn’t this the guy who looked at the awesome-looking …

Last week, Vidya and I discovered a coffee shop in Secunderabad. What’s so great about that, you might ask. Prepare for a longish tale. Get a cup of coffee if you want!
We both love a cup of filter coffee to start off the day. When we first set up house in Chennai, we went through a phase of experimentation with different types of coffee until we settled on our own blend – Peaberry and Plantation A, half and half, without any chicory. This is a pure coffee, as opposed to …

Every Sunday, volunteers from the local Roots and Shoots chapter visit the Nehru Zoological Park and station themselves near the cages. They talk to visitors, keeping them from feeding or troubling the animals. Since the park receives (roughly) ten times the number of visitors on Sundays as all the rest of the days put together, this action is very impactful.
Today, as part of an initiative at work, a few colleagues and I joined the R&S volunteers for a day at the zoo.
But before we kick off, a word on the …

Had dinner at 17 Degrees North, a relative new-comer promising global cuisine. We’d just finished picking up groceries at Ratnadeep and were hungry, and 17 Degrees North beckoned from above. Located in the same building as Ratnadeep in Hitech city, 17 Degrees is ideally sited if you live, like us, on this side of town.
The night was hot, and we felt at home as we entered the pleasantly air-conditioned, dimly-lit space. It was cozy, not too full, not too empty, and the decor was interestingly kitschy without being plasticky. We …

Sparrows – those ubiquitous birds that thronged our childhoods – are rapidly disappearing today. After trying for a few weeks, I finally saw the one-legged sparrow who lives in my neighbourhood, and had the privilege of taking a few pictures of him. This blog post was the result.