Tushar Mangl

"You can ask anyone in Gurgaon. Everyone knows about me," informs Panditji, the owner and Chef at Pandjitji ka Dhaba.  It is just a small one room eatery divided into two halves, one where food is cooked, other to sit and eat. But it has that old world charm to it that makes it stand out to millions of other small time eateries. Founded more than 50 years ago, Pandjit ka Dhaba is situated at a corner of the Sadar Bazar in Gurgaon, one of the oldest markets in the city. There is no special hoarding, no headboards to point it out.Till date the food is cooked on fire lit by wood. Cooking food over wood is a gone trend now. No one does that in cities especially. But that is still alive and well at this place. It is one of the things that set them apart. Other than the special flavour it brings on to the food. I went there on a very hot and humid afternoon for lunch, all alone knowing well, the heat won't be tolerated by my friends. My generation has been air conditi

The hunt for a balanced nutritional diet is a fad these days. Each and every one of us, want to eat healthily but don’t know how? We can’t resist those ever delicious and oily and unhealthy food snacks. But we still want to somehow inculcate the discipline of healthy eating in ourselves. That’s the paradox in which we live in. Add to this the environment we live in. We exhale copious amounts of dirt, smoke, sand, airborne chemicals, which all go inside our body and cause a lot of harm. They affect our immune system and cause harm to us. Then look at the food we eat. Almost all food grown today is heavily loaded with insecticides, fungicides, fertilizer and urea that stick with the crops. We are actually consuming all that chemical load.  It goes into our system and creates an imbalance of chemicals already in our body, which causes so many diseases and problems. How can we remedy this? How can we control all this? It is difficult I agree, but not impossible. A healthy di

It was raining heavily Saturday morning and I wondered how would I reach Strikers, the venue for the WordUp! even organized by IndiBlogger, BigRock and ,me. But soon, the rain slowed down and I was able to reach the venue which was packed by the time I reached. I was late but just in time to listen to the first main speaker of the day, KV Sridhar a.k.a. Pops. His session was informative and highly intelligent. This one was followed by a session by Lakshnipathy Bhat on Blogs&Brands: A Love Hate Story.  Nandita Iyer, a food blogger from Bangalore came up with the session titled -  Blogging and Beyond Next was Rachit Hirani - Content is King. Rachit is into writing about automobiles and stuff.  Still the rules of content remain same across After which snacks and a light lunch was served along with beer and juice. This was a time to chat up and meet with blogger acquaintances new and old.  Next up was Kiran Manral  with Confessions of a Reformed Blogger. The references to Alice

WordUp! 2015 at Gurgaon, on 11 July was a spectacular event. A cool relaxing atmosphere, an array of talented speakers and of course great food made it to an event that will be remembered for long. But all those details in my next post. This one is about that one brief incident, which I wish I would never have witnessed in between a group of creative individuals. So this stand up comedian comes up on stage to tell us some jokes. His name is Manik Mahna. He sounded okay, maybe some better jokes would come later. But just few minutes into his act this couple gets very upset. You know how these stand up comedians are. Making jokes about women, people, audiences etc. The idea is to chill but this couple heats up. The guy was telling lady jokes like, "I was with my girlfriend, I wanted to tell her best of luck but she was a buxom beauty, so by mistake he said 'breast of luck'. This upset the couple, who were not et all pleased by such jokes. They shouted and everything an

So Greece has finally taken the plunge. It went into default. Of course there is a referendum waiting to happen. So 5 days after it was supposed to pay its creditors, Greece will do a referendum. As if for past months, creditors and borrowers were just enjoying paid vacation hopping from one meeting to another. Really, if the Greeks wanted a referendum they should have done it and over with it by now. And therein lies the arrogance and brashness of new age borrowers. Playing the victim card and funding the media's craving for the underdog story. You can see it across the globe. The big businesses in the United States being bailed out by their government, the sovereign defaults. So many people and businesses willingly wanting to go bankrupt as to show creditors who the king in the transaction is. Greece is just a symbol. In India take a closer look at our state-owned power companies. Thousands of crores of debt is what they have raked in to supply power to their people. Bu