Lalita Iyer

  IT IS ALL ABOUT AMBIENCE When Murali goes on a tour I normally hole up at home with the remote all to myself. But that also is rationed because I shut the TV by 9 pm and get tucked in to chat with friends in foreign shores, it being their daytime. There are some friends here too, who are owlish by nature and sleep late and so I catch up with them also. This is also the time to have a face to face with others, singly and not feeling rattled that I have left the husband at home. Not that he minds, but all the same. And so Press Club it was after a long time. Normally Amar Devulapally and/or VJM Divakar are my companions on these visits. This time it was my pleasure to be with both of them. It is a treat to be with the boys and both are romantic by nature and can wax eloquent, especially Divakar, whose knowledge of music both Indian classical (Hindustani and Carnatic) and film music is incomparable. The little tid bits that he shares are great listening material. While Amar has a ph...

  HI! FERZANA She is my friend from school, Nirmala Convent, Rajkot, Gujarat. And a very strong memory I have of her is she was friendly (is) and carried the most delicious cheese sandwiches. I naturally tend to love Parsis for their generosity in slathering the butter and usage of slabs of cheese. Apart from their fondness for the tipple and the accompaniment of the choicest of bad words and never utter them singly. They are always a string of gaalis.... With the cheese sandwich memory, I don't do justice to Ferzu. She is here from Rajkot (my hometown in Gujarat) to spend a couple of days with her son Aarish, who is in the hotel business and is a revenue officer. Her elder one, Anosh is in the front office of Denwa Backwaters near Bhopal. Since her visit to Delhi coincided with my visit, we met for lunch and lounged. Khan Market is a kiss away from The Ambassador and so we sashayed in the sun and saw that people thronged and everyone was selling or looking for something to eat. Ca...

  SHIKANJI IN HOT DELHI This would normally be known as a double whammy! And in my case also a tad overwhelming. Murali and I have travelled to Delhi and landed at noon. We are here to attend a reception of a friend's son. Gosh! And I wore a gaudy dress (by my standards) because I think Delhi mein chalega. And I was horrendously awkward. Luckily there was a bar and the waiter hung around our table, replenishing the glass, whenever he thought I was getting dehydrated. The venue for the reception was the Delhi Gymkhana and so the ambience was a given. The food was good, music was carefully chosen and sung wonderfully, making a White couple dance ever so gracefully. They were cool on the uneven lawn, whereas I was giddy in my gaudy dress. We also felt different because all the young ones who knew us, just dived to 'paon laggoon' and considering most of the kids I know elsewhere, do not even acknowledge your presence, this was a shocker. At the airport, it took us some time to ...

  FLYOVERS AND BANDIS I went for a ride. Normally there is an errand to run, but I decided to just take a ride and check on a new flyover. There are so many new ones these days, attached to new roads. Normally sense of geography is pretty good, but now even I am a tad foxed. Of course flyovers will lead to ease in travel provided you reach the flyover. Even as I was thinking that the roads were fairly empty, thanks to it being vacation time, I thought too early. While the ride on the flyover was easy and a dream, the moment you descend you get caught in the traffic swirl of the long signals and sometimes lack of them. There are so many new buildings. They are going higher by the day. Is anyone wondering how fire fighters will reach top floors? Do we have such tall snorkels? Unless the builders have a water ace up their sleeves, I would be a bit scared. Also all the thunder and lightning during the storms that Hyderabad gets, it must be that much louder and brighter on the 38th floo...

  STORMY CROP..... The glory of the yellow flowers lending their golden aura into my home, the thunderstorm which has helped in bringng down the temperature and now the collective sigh of relief that this month is almost over. In effect, April has not been a cruel month, with due apologies to T S Eliot. But May stands tall, all 31 days, and if I dare look into it, looks like it is going to be insufferable. But who knows, the coming month 'May' also be packed with surprises. While we were driving down from Vijaywada the other day, I had said the weather was balmy and very soothing, but even as we were driving back to Hyderabad, it seemed like we were chasing a minor storm and a light drizzle. But the skies were clean, a light blue with fluffy clouds. And later in the night one could see the arc of the moon and pretty Venus. That it was more than a drizzle came to my attention, only when I saw minor farmers running around covering their harvest. Most of it would be paddy, unless ...