Beat the heat at Culture Gully, Kingdom of Dreams

The boulevard, Kingdom of Dreams

With the weekend rolling by and the mercury touching new highs, figuring out what do to over the weekend can be a chore. Although there are many malls that you can haunt, mall fatigue does set in, even for a retail junkie. Ahem! A visit to Culture Gully at the Kingdom of Dreams in Gurgaon is a fun way to beat the heat.

A faux beach created near the Goa and Kerela stalls

Everything at Kingdom of Dreams is large and grand, and the entry to Culture Gully is no different. The grand entryway, set inside a 20ft high golden lotus flower studded with tiny mirrors evokes images of the grandeur that must have been enjoyed by the royals in times of yore. Step inside the boulevard, and you’ll be forgiven for thinking that you are still outside and wondering how the temperature is so cool. The air-conditioned boulevard is topped by an atmospheric blue sky. Some skilful wizardry (read lighting and decoration) ensures that you get a feel of being in an open-air marketplace – the sky and lighting change throughout the day to closely mimic the outdoors.

Mumbai stall - the entrance resembles a Mumbai local train

Spread across 90,000 sq. feet, Culture Gully is a visual treat of theme restaurants and architecture styles from 14 Indian states. Each kiosk is designed to showcase the best of the state. The Punjab stall, for example, has a woven cot and truck parked outside the dhaba; you enter the Mumbai stall through a local train compartment, which is topped by the façade of the Victoria Terminus and Bollywood movie posters. Towards the end of the boulevard are the Goa and Kerala stalls, complete with a faux beach and a beach shack serving up grilled sea food.

Each state also has a handicraft store where you can pick up some cool souvenirs, ranging from earrings to clothes, coffee mugs to home ware, and glass bangles to branded diamond jewelry (go figure!).

On the second level, you’ll also find a fortune telling center, with tarot card readers, palmists and astrologists.

Walk around the boulevard and poke around the stores, catch a street performance, get your fortune told, get a family portrait sketched – there’s a lot for you to do at Culture Gully.

The stall selling kati kulfi

Once you’ve explored it all, decide where you’d like to eat – warning: it might just be a tough decision to make! With restaurants from all 14 states offering up local cuisine, you can choose to experiment or stick to what you know. The mutton biryani at the Lucknow stall, filter coffee at the Kerala stall and kati kulfi opposite the Punjab stall are highly recommended.

It’s best to get in early, as the place starts getting very crowded towards early evening.

If you want to make an entire day out of the trip, catch a show at Nautanki Mahal, which is currently playing Zangoora. It’s worth every penny! (Click to read a review of Zangoora.)

Book review: All and Nothing by Raksha Bharadia

If you go through my reading list, you’ll notice that it’s not too often that I read Indian authors. I don’t like their portrayal of India and Indians – it’s generally geared towards selling a picture of India that Westerners would like to believe. Of a dirty, grimy city and uncouth “brownies.” (One Indian author’s description of Indians. Really.) But there have been some interesting novels by Indian authors lately, like the Immortals of Meluha by Amish, so when I saw the blurb on the back of All and Nothing, I knew I was going to have to give it a read.

Image courtesy Rupa & Co

From the back cover:

All and Nothing tells the tale of five individuals. Tina is a talented artist, desperately in love with Aditya. But he cannot let go of his past. Their marriage sours and Tina teeters on the edge. Kriya is a fashion designer, chic and successful – but tormented; Poorvi, is a socialite and feminist – but discontented; Manas is a struggling copy writer, besotted with Gayatri – but plagued; Upasna is a willing victim of domestic violence.

Then one day, Tina summons her friends to share their stories from the beginning.

The bulk of this slim, 223 page novel is about Tina and Aditya’s whirlwind courtship and marriage. Aditya is everything that Tina wants in a man, and Tina is everything that Aditya wants in his wife, but while Tina loves Aditya, he’s still not over his first marriage with Antara. Things between the two start souring barely a year into their marriage. For Aditya, this was a marriage of convince, a way to get ahead in his career. Tina, desperate for his love, clings to him, tries hard to ease his hurt from his first marriage, and when all fails, turns to the bottle. She becomes an alcoholic. It takes her a long time to realize just how hollow their marriage is, and when she does, she decides to leave him. It is then that she invites her friends, all of whom are carrying a secret alone, to share their stories from the beginning and to help one another begin their healing process.

The novel is quite well-written. Raksha is evidently an astute observer. Her insight into relationships and understanding of the human psyche is well-reflected in the narrative. The characters are well drawn out and believable, and she hooks you in to their world and makes you care about them. There is a lot in the novel that anyone in a relationship will be able to identify with, because at the end of the day, no marriage is all roses, there are the occasional thorns. There may have been a few grammatical mistakes here and there, but it was easy to overlook them because the story was so gripping. You really wanted to know what happened next and how each of the people would cope.

Overall, All and Nothing is a beautifully observed novel that takes a close look at different relationships and what makes them tick. I would heartily recommend it to everyone.

Build up your self-control

It turns out that our capacity for self-control is surprisingly like a muscle — like a bicep or tricep. And like any muscle, self-control can vary in its strength, not only from person to person, but from moment to moment. Spend all day dealing with distractions, hassles and stressors at work, and it’s awfully hard to summon up the willpower to resist the allure of the cocktail, the cigarette or the fully-loaded nacho platter. – The Relationship Between Exercise And Self Control by Heidi Grant Halvorson

That simple paragraph was a Eureka moment for me. I’m finally in a job where I get to reach home around 6:00 pm, giving me ample time to pursue other interests. I’ve been wanting to get back to exercising, learn Italian and the tarot – and now I have more than enough time to do all of these things.

But I’ve lacked the motivation. I’ve been unable to exert any kind of willpower or self-control over my slothful ways.

I reach home and I feel exhausted, I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere – unless it’s out for dinner or drinks with friends.

Everyday I’ve been telling myself that I’m over-thinking things…that before even sitting down or doing anything else once I’m home, I should change into tracks and go for a walk. It. Does. Not. Work.

Then I figured it’s probably best that I finish my workout before I get home – which means join a gym and get in a workout on my way back from work. It took me an incalculably long time to get around to going and finding out about the membership, taking a trial session, and finally joining.

Italian and the tarot – I look at the books and download podcasts, but don’t read or listen.

So that little paragraph up there just hit me. Hard. It was the exhaustion on some days and sheer boredom on others that was translating into this total lack of will power on my part.

The great news is that if you want more self-control in general, you can get more. And you get more self-control the same way you get bigger muscles: you’ve got to give it regular workouts.

So how do you do this? By making yourself do something you don’t much like doing, each and every day. Within a few weeks, not only would you have built up your will power, you’ll be much better at other tasks where you need to exert some self-control.

There’s actual science behind this.

In a study, psychologists Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng gave participants a free gym membership and individually-tailored exercise programs that included aerobics, free-weights and resistance training. After exercising regularly over the course of two months, the participants had not only increased their ability to do a variety of laboratory self-control tasks, but also reported that almost every aspect of their lives that involved using some self-control seemed to have improved dramatically.

Cool, isn’t it?

So, what are you going to work on to improve your self-control muscle?

Me? I’m exercising regularly!

Happy father's day, daddy!

My father…he’s been my inspiration, my ideal…the man I can count on no matter what. He’s the one I run to when I’m hurt or happy, when I have a secret to share or need advice. He’s the one who will sit with me patiently, explaining whatever it was that I want to know. He allows me to use my judgement, to make mistakes and learn from them. He’s always there to hold my hand, to steer my course, to lend a shoulder, a word, a kiss.

So today when I browsed through PostSecret, I was saddened by the number of people who posted secrets saying they either were not in touch with their fathers or wished they had a different father. Whose fathers loved them less or were not a part of their lives.

Until I saw this secret:

Me too!

I love you, mom and dad.

And daddy, Happy Father’s Day! You’re still the one who can heal my hurt with a hug and a kiss…I love you!

Friday Frame #18: All in a row

This week’s frame is one of my own photographs – in fact, one of my first experiments in manual focusing!

(More Friday Frames)

If you have any artwork or photography to share, please leave a comment, a link back to your blog and your e-mail address, and I’ll feature it on an upcoming Friday Frame!

There's something to be said about the smell of a book

Isn’t there? Though this may be the age of e-readers and e-books, which take up less space and enable you to have your library with you where ever you go, somehow, nothing beats the experience of reading a physical book. It’s weight. It’s smell. It’s heft. The sound of a page turning in the middle of the night. Of underlining passages. Scribbling notes in the margins. Displaying your collection on a bookshelf. Until it overflows. Spills over from the shelves. Having them piled up near your bed. On the coffee table. In the kitchen. Everywhere you look – a tantalizing cover looking back at you. Whispering its secrets into your ear.

Yes, there’s something to be said for a physical book.

I say this after reading e-books. Despite reading e-books. Which reminds me, I have to download one recommended by The Huffington Post. It’s free, it’s fast, it will travel all over the world with me.

But I will still enter bookstores. And walk out with a bag full of books under my arms.

Because…

There’s something to be said about the smell of a book…

Life = Risk

If you’ve ever tried to learn something new, achieve a goal, set a resolution, you’ve been met with failure somewhere along the way. Hopefully it isn’t too often. Hopefully you’ve managed to pull yourself up, dust yourself off, and go on to achieve greater heights, like these individuals, who never said never.

Don’t lose heart. You can do it!

(Click to read older Spiritual Sunday posts)

iPhone 3GS vs Nokia E7 – 1/3

Yes, you read that heading right! I recently had a chance to play around with the new Nokia E7, and some of its features compared to the iPhone really blew me! I still heart my iPhone, but if something’s good, it’s good, right?

First off, the E7 is a pretty refined phone, with a form factor that’s quite similar to the N8. Being the latest in Nokia’s impressive array of Communicator series phones (come on, admit it – there was a time you loved that phone!), the materials and build quality are excellent. But I’m sure you can find many hardware and software reviews online – what I’m going to focus on are the three features that I loved on this phone.

Image by Nokia RSA via Flickr

The first is the tilt-out display and physical keyboard. Though it takes a while to figure out how to slide open the phone, once you get a hang of it, the hinge mechanism feels really solid. No matter how much you fidget with it, you’re unlikely to spoil it. The angle between the phone and keyboard is perfect for typing, as well as for watching videos. The keypad is laid out like a standard computer keyboard with a separate numerical pad, making messaging and emailing a breeze.

But choose your location carefully. Flick it open in a crowded coffee shop and you’re sure to get some attention, as I found out when I decided to type up a blog post on the phone. It’s not easy to get work done when you have people looking over at your table and nudging each other, or coming over and quizzing you about the phone, wanting to try it out hands-on! But then, that really isn’t a cause for complaint, is it?

So, what makes it any different from an iPhone? Though the virtual keypad on the iPhone is easy to use, there are times when you mis-type spellings and sometimes the auto correct is quite annoying. Using the E7’s keypad is similar to trying on the laptop, and the pleasure derived from that is surely unbeatable.

What sets this phone apart from the BlackBerry and other QWERTY phones on the market – screen size, baby! The E7 boasts a 4” AMOLED screen with vivid colors, which makes viewing web pages, videos and camera images a pleasure. But that’s another feature and another post.

Stay tuned!

What's on your playlist?

When I was in school, I used to have music playing in my room all day long. I woke up to music, read to music, slept to music. Fast forward to working life, and now my music listening time has shrunk. Considerably.

Now, I drive to music, walk to music and listen to some (sometimes) when I get back home.

These are my three current favorites – songs that I can listen to on repeat All Day Long.

Need you now – Lady Antebellum: I love the raw emotion of wanting someone back so bad!

Pretty pretty please – Pink:– So relevant, given how obsessed we are with the size zero phenomenon. Greatlyrics too!

Boogie man – AC/DC: So peppy! The best-est song to drive to!

So, what’s on repeat on your playlist?

Four things I learnt from Dexter

Image via Wikipedia

As season 5 of Dexter draws to a close and I get Dexter withdrawal symptoms, I thought I’d pen down the 4 things I learnt from my favorite serial killer.

Plan: Dexter followed a code when it came to choosing targets for his dark passenger. Once he zeroed in on his victim, he did some thorough planning and surveillance to plan the kill.

Translated to real life: Once you’ve got a goal in mind, do some planning, and draw up some tips and strategies to ensure that you don’t get derailed. For e.g., if you decide to go on a diet, do some research on meal plans, purchase the right foods, draw up weekly menus and prepare as much as you can beforehand.

Focus: When Dexter is on the prowl, he has his eye firmly on the target. So much so that his dates are planned around stalking schedules. It’s all about focus until he has his victim on the kill table and disposes of the body.

Translated to real life: When you want to achieve something, you got to schedule time to devote to the goal each and every day. Some days may be busy, when you may be able to spend just about 10 minutes on working towards your goal. Other days you might be able to devote a couple of hours. No matter how much time you have on hand, constant steps – big or small – will help you achieve your target. For e.g., diet and exercise go hand in hand. If you can’t devote an hour to the gym everyday, try going for a 30 minute (or even two 15 minute) walk on the days you can’t hit the gym.

Image via Wikipedia

Cover all bases: Dexter had all his bases covered when he was out for a kill. A strong alibi, ensuring he got his target without being seen, cleaning up the kill room and disposing the body in the Gulf stream.

Translated to real life: No matter what our grandiose plans or how much we prepare, life happens. Be prepared to get derailed occasionally, but then get right back on to it! Again, taking the example of the diet, if you indulge in a sinful chocolate pastry one day, don’t beat yourself up or just give up. Go back to your plan the next day and keep on working on it with single-minded devotion. Better still, throw out all the foods that are not on your “allowed” list. so you don’t get tempted.

Constant check-in: Dexter’s constant companion and voice of caution was his adoptive father, Harry. Whenever he seemed to deviate from the path, his father appeared to offer words of advise and steer him back on course.

Translated to real life: Involve one or two people who are close to you and will support you in achieving your dreams. Schedule a check-in at least once a week, when you give them an update on your progress and discuss any road blocks you might be encountering. It’s always easier to go for goal when you have your very own cheerleaders encouraging you along!

Now, I wonder when Season 6 will air in India!

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