Dheeraj Kalgutkar

  Photo by Rodrigo Curi on Unsplash   There are very few things that send me into a quiet rage as much as food dishonesty. Let me demonstrate. Before I do that, let’s get a few things out of the way. There are no superhumans here. And superman is a figment of imagination. Likewise, not everyone can be a chef and not all chefs can cook all food items. There are as many cuisines and foodstuffs in the world as there are people. So to expect any one person to know every kind of cuisine/food is absolutely silly. And that is why every restaurant comes up with its own menu, a limited set of food items which they promise to serve their guests. So we now have restaurants declaring a set of dishes they promise to serve in the form of a menu and of their own volition. Naturally, this means they have a chef and/or cooks who know what these foodstuffs on their menu are and how they are made, also they know what goes into these items and obviously, they make sure the ingredients require...

The bus conductors across India have problem of their own, from chewing pan to indecent language to not-so-warm behavior. But this one was not so cut-out for that definition. Most of my traveling across the stretch of India which I have stayed and moved has been by bus, mostly public and sometimes private. Rarely on train and more scarcely by flight. Most of Indians will relate to this except for those staying in Mumbai for them bus can be replaced with local train! And this is where I have met people from different hues of life, old, young and those not-at-all charming end-of-the-world-loud babies. It’s great experience where you throw yourself to unexpectedness. But there’s one person you have interacted regularly while traveling by bus, ticket collector or bus conductor. Recently, few women have started to apply for the job of conductor and take up the challenging work which otherwise is a man’s world to move from one side of the (most of the times) crowded bus to other si...

A photo taken from distant... "Sir! You don't know with whom you are playing with. You will find yourself in serious problem if you continue what you are doing," said or threatened a construction worker when I went overboard and climbed the vehicle carrying too-loud-and-noisy generator and, turned it off!   Now someone who always argues about non-violence and respecting the law of the land (I consider myself one among them) would term my actions as 'taking law in hand'. I don't disagree. In fact my friend who was witness to all this mayhem expressed the same. What caused me to go overboard around 12 O' clock midnight was no extraordinary cause but mere an occurrence of incident which goes on every other day in India but few of us bother to take note (or notice!).  So let me take you to what happened or was happening all these days in a densely populated residential area. There was this construction which was going on around our place at the...

The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk! How is that name and what would be your reaction when you first see this book on your shelf or bookstore or at Google's play store ( that's where I found it! ) for a price which is no price at all? Hold on! And what if I tell you it's written by an author you admire? Nevertheless to say, you would pick one copy, not to finish completely but to just turn few pages. I was no alien to such behavior either. Although I hindered at first but purchased it after reading few starting sample pages which Google offered. Did I started reading the moment I purchased? Nope. With new office and something a new discipline called work, I had to curtail myself of the luxury that is book reading.  A week in office without fun nor work, the serious work, I was getting bored but then I knew or perhaps heard from Sardesai, "Don't feel bored. It's a terrible thing to get bored." So after few unsuccessful attempts at different horizons I f...