Explorer of Experiences

  The good folks behind Brooklyn Shuffle , Jimmy Hu and WTF! , now bring the nearly year-old The Bombay Bronx from Mumbai to Pune. This is an all-day bar where everything, from the interiors to the food unbridles the soul of Mumbai. Enter the bar, and it feels like you’ve chanced upon a set of a movie that is an ode to the maximum city. The Bombay Bronx is fitted with installations reminiscent of the city – take for instance the local train-style booth seating with train handles suspended from the ceiling, Irani café-style tables and chairs, a wall-sized painting of Amitabh Bachchan in his Deewar attire, tin fittings on the bar resembling the roofing of Dharavi ’s slum houses, train routes mapped out on the ceiling, lights fitted into loud-coloured dabbas and the neon signage of the iconic Eros theatre. Clearly, subtlety was not the brief to the interior designer. It is little wonder that we caught many wild-eyed walk-in diners taking a tour of the place before settling...

Mussoorie International School “Hanisha, you’re going to boarding school! Are you excited?” To my eleven year old mind, this one sentence coming to me from my mum was just too much to process; I probably did not completely comprehend the entirety of the situation and the journey I was going to embark on. One minute, it is life as usual with my sisters and I returning from day school in Nigeria lugging a 3kg bag with books – and the next minute, there was going to be a disruption in this cyclical routine of eight years in the form of being sent to a boarding school in Mussoorie. I did not even know where Mussoorie was! Was I prepared to leave behind my oyster and be swung atop mountains unknown? I was fresh out of fifth standard and watched as my mum and dad gathered the contents of my cupboard and neatly placed them into a suitcase. We were departing for Delhi the next day from where we would hail a cab and head towards my mum’s maternal home in Jaipur. I remember it all so w...

This post is written as an entry to the #MoreIndianThanYouThink contest by Lufthansa India.  It was a contest I found out through Indiblogger:  http://bit.ly/MITYTIndiblogger  Good ads are rare to see these days. But this Lufthansa India TVC was really touching. Here we have an international airline that has tapped into the EQ of Indians so beautifully. We witness a conversation between a grandfather and his grandson where the former discusses his preconceptions about travelling to Germany by a German airline. But Lufthansa breaks these notions with the airlines being so clued in to India and its culture! This topic 'How the world is more Indian than you think' is an interesting one. While our country with her burgeoning young population is aping the West, the rest of the world is watching India closer than we think. Decade after decade, NRIs have been leading the way in being India's culture ambassadors in foreign countries. Until five years ago, I was an NRI too. So...

There's a first time for everything! Last month, I was interviewed by Social Samosa . I'm very excited to share this on my blog. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE INTERVIEW We interviewed,  Hanisha Lalwani  – Assistant Manager, Marketing & Communications who handles the social media vertical internally at Courtyard by Marriott Pune City Centre. She highlights how Courtyard better understands its customers & fosters brand loyalty through fresh content. She also throws light upon how customer queries & grievances are effectively addressed at the earliest. What role does social media play in your marketing communications?  How important is it for a premier business brand like yours to be in the social space? The emphasis on social media and the role it plays in our integrated marketing communications plan has become more pronounced, especially over the last year. Having a digital...

It's not everyday you get a complimentary stay at a room atop a tea plantation. So when I got the chance to stay at Tea Nest Annexe in Coonoor, I grabbed it. Even though I just returned from a two week trip in Ladakh, I was roaring to explore Coonoor - it's not much heard of, visited or spoken of. When we landed at Coimbatore, a humid yet cool weather greeted us. There were hordes of taxi drivers offering us their service, and we asked one to take us to Mettupalayam bus stand from where we could catch the local bus to Coonoor. The ticket for this 3 hour road trip by bus cost us Rs.40 versus a door-to-door cab ride that was Rs.1600 (post haggling). While driving us to Mettupulayam, our taxi driver tried relentlessly to convince us to take up his Rs. 1500 offer seeing that we had settled in so comfortably in the back seat. But we rejected. We hopped into the local bus - it wasn't promising by any standard, the usual rickety exterior and a houseful interior. The bus con...

This was my first published work for The Punekar . This website is a great resource for someone new to Pune and just about anyone who wants to make the most of their time in this lovely little city! I met Benedicte through some official work and we kept in touch. Her unassuming nature and simplicity is quite enduring and I really enjoyed presenting her story of settling into Pune being an expat. Hope you enjoy the read. Here is the link: http://www.thepunekar.com/in-conversation-with-benedicte-le-bris/2014/09/ A  kurta  over denims. That is not what I expected to see a French lady wearing when she walked into the café for our tete-a-tete. Say Hello to Benedicte Le Bris; simple-looking, comfortable in her skin, and blending in with the crowd – she is an atypical expat. Originally from Plaisir, a small suburban town, a 40-minute train journey from Paris, Benedicte’s tryst with Pune began in 2013 when she accompanied her husband, a Maharashtrian, to Pune from Londo...

The Groom's not-so-nervous-feet So I was in Bangalore and no prizes for guessing why! I was attending (yet another) wedding of course. But it is not everyday that you get to witness your Nepalese friend a.k.a Groom in a South Indian style dhoti, worn with what seemed like yards of pristine white cloth. With the '2 States' style wedding over in a day, I still had a free day to spend in Bangalore. It's a city I have been to around four to five times now, so I was keen on exploring a new facet of it. This 'Garden City' was facing its worst summer yet and boy was the mercury soaring. Glaring sun mixed with dust from construction sites mixed with pollution from the never-moving traffic made the most headache-inducing pot pourri. I still decided to brave the heat and venture out to make the most of my time. After a quick check on what Lonely Planet recommends to see , I grabbed a friend and headed out with a list of 4-5 places chalked out to visit. This w...