InterNations Happy Hour
Last Wednesday we went to this cocktail ‘grab your drinks and dance’ party organized in Dublin at Park Sheraton by InterNations-an expatriate community for expats and returning NRIs. I would recommend joining InterNations to everyone who has moved to Chennai for any period of time from whichever country and city-it is a pretty big group of fun people and they keep organizing some amazing events from time to time like this one we went to. They also have online forums wherein one can meet like-minded expats or NRIs to do activities together like play tennis, watch a movie, learn a new dance form, go on photography tours or just chill out in the city!
Dublin was fun-we met several cool and fun, young people from various countries like Spain, Brazil, Mexico, France and I was quite amazed to see the extent to which people from different countries take interest in India and everything about this country-the culture, the religion, the language differences, the cuisines-you name it! And they are more well-traversed in India than I am and I used to take pride in my domestic travels here! Some of them are here on short term work assignments, some are here to stay with their Indian husbands or meet their Tamil boyfriend’s parents, some want to shift here to learn more about the culture and languages and some are just traveling for a few months to discover this fascinating place! It was great fun to hang out with them and exchange notes about living in India and especially in Chennai!Will look forward to more such events!!
One evening of cosmopolitans and raspberry-margarita shooters coupled with lamb kebabs and fried salmon, was followed by a massive cleansing act!!! The very next day we (my insti. colleagues and I) went to this place called Sanjeevanam on Nungambakkam high road to sample an ayurvedic lunch and boy was I in for a gala treat!!(http://www.cholayilsanjeevanam.com/health_res.htm)
Ayurvedic shots 😛
They serve a fixed 7 course meal starting with 5 different juices in shot glasses (nut juice, haritha buttermilk, rice bran juice and so on) followed by a salad course of 4 items (which has an amazing kuttu), a semi-cooked veggies course of 4 items (my most favs were a beetroot preparation and a pumpkin one), a fully-cooked veggies course (this had the best item of all–a super avial!), then red rice with dhal, then white rice with the best sambhar I have ever had, rasam, buttermilk and morkuzhambu and then ending with kheer, a spoon of pure honey and paan of a very unique kind! And even after eating so much I did not feel full or sloth at all–in fact I felt so energetic that I kept working enthusiastically for the next few hours post lunch!! I would recommend this ayurvedic treat to anyone who loves to eat and is in for a bit of culinary adventure–totally worth the price (Rs 250 per head only!).
And finally to sort of end an eventful week, today I saw my first ever Squash tournament! Had gone to the EA mall to do some shopping and watch Descendants at the Escape theaters-sadly the show was sold out (darn!!) but lo and behold! One part of the Under 21 Squash World Cup Championship was being held inside the EA mall in makeshift courts (see pic)-it was pretty darn cool! So instead of George Clooney we ended up watching a women’s match between India and Australia–a big crowd of mall-goers cheering from different levels of the huge mall was quite a scene to witness!
(reminded me of my raquet-ball days-c'mon I'm allowed to brag in my own blog :P)
EA Mall for sure has a great variety of branded stores-they even have a Diesel, an Aldo, a Vero Moda, and a Canali store among others, to my pleasant surprise. Having left India in 2006 and having rarely visited a mall since then, I clearly wasn’t expecting such good international brands to have stores in Chennai-thankfully I was wrong 🙂 One strange thing about moving back here from the US though is that I feel more miserly than ever! While in the US I would easily spend $30-$35 on any piece of clothing, I think twice before shelling out Rs 2000 and above for the same here though everyone around me doesn’t seem to have a problem doing that! It’s like Rs 1000 is the new Rs 100 in this country now 😛 And I am surely taking my own sweet time to get used to this ‘upgrade’ in vibrant consumerism.
Oh forgot to mention–I bought fish today!!! yeppie!!
One of our best discoveries in Chennai! 😉
1st time in this city and am jubilant 😀 The fish shop is super close to our house and they have a wide variety from Rohu to Bekti to Pompfret to Sardine to Barracuda..hence my joy now knows no bounds! And to top it all, our maid doesn’t only understand and speak in Hindi but can also cook chicken, fish and apparently her USP is biriyani!! Ahh..the joys of finding someone so unique in this city of idli-sambhar-rasam-dosa (which I totally love though but hubby feels exactly the opposite :P)
Alritey..signing off now..looking forward to a relaxed weekend with lots of eating, reading (Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin is quite a compelling narrative about modern economic history in the post WWII era-might use it for my new course to teach Case Studies in International Economics!), listening to Talat Aziz at a ghazal concert in Chetpet, and hopefully watching Hound of Baskervilles from the 3rd series of BBC Sherlock at home (for those interested, torrent files can be downloaded from eztv.it and I upgraded my internet plan just to accommodate such worthwhile downloads :P)!! 🙂
From California to Chennai 
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