Dined @ Dindigul Thalappakatti Biryani

Today I dined at Dindigul Thalappakatti Biryani with a colleague who is also a foodie and I persuaded her that we should do a lunchon together at this place since she also shares the same interest as mine (for biryani). Let me tell you, the craving for biryani in life is endless. I always had this feeling that eating biryani makes me feel good about this life that I live and I am born to eat this wonderful course of meal. (Too much feelings huh)

So I believed that Dindigul Thalappakatti is a very unique place to have biryani because its not the usual biryani that you get to eat here in Chennai. The biryani is made out of Seeraga Samba rice and not the basmati rice which is used elsewhere. I have also noticed that some Bangalorians use the same type of rice and I love this taste.

So we left office sharp at 12.55pm to reach the place early and to have some good time together. I really like the idea of having a visual representation of food on your table even before it arrives and the table had a good spread paper which looked so mouth-watering. We surfed through the menu card for 5 minutes and finally decided to attack the different dishes. I explained her the special delicacies that this place serves like karandi (its a deep fried egg which has chicken stuffing inside), kola urundai (its a keema type meat ball) and the mutton biryani which is sinfully tasty.

I decided to have mutton biryani and my colleague wanted to try kola mutton biryani. We ordered Dindigul Kozhi Roast which looked so authentic and we couldn't resist starring at it. So the order is placed and we waited. Whenever we looked around for our food we only noticed that others table gets served and we turned our heads back to look at each other once again :-(

So finally the food comes without making us wait for long and it smelled like heaven and looked so delicious. Here we began to attack the most awaited biryani that both of us craved for and enjoyed the meal. Both of us sank in the Dindigul taste and exchanged some general conversations that we have one more day to go for the weekend to come. (Yes we again wait for the weekends to come like school children)


We are almost done with our food and my colleague is still not out of that karandi dish which looks very yummy. She asked me if I wanted to try that too, and not that I have any objections and I said, "I don't mind". So we placed an order for deep fried egg with chicken karandi which took about 15 minutes. And guess what we have on our table finally? he served us just the deep fried egg. We asked him to replace with the one that we ordered and he realized it was his mistake and asked us to enjoy this as well. So this egg karandi was treated as a complimentary :-)

I have had biryani in many places in Chennai and never thought of writing about it. But Dindigul Thalappakatti made me to do so because its very authentic and I feel they serve niche food which is not available in other restaurants in Chennai. If you're in Chennai or if your planning to come down to Chennai sometime, don't forget to visit his heavenly place.

Photo Source: http://www.thalappakatti.com/

Lion King 3D Experience

I happened to watch Lion King 3D movie with a bunch friends yesterday. I have never seen the original movie when it released may be because I was too young or never had the opportunity to see the movie later on. Anyway no regrets now and its like I waited so long to experience the best of bestest in 3D version:-). Such a brilliant movie and the impeccable 3D experience I must tell you. Watch it yourself to experience it once again.

Simba left with such a great impact and he is sucha shweettty pie :-) No one knows how much I cried and I was literally weeping when Mufaza died and the way Simba was crying, OMG such a brilliant visual composition it was. Enormous amount of hard work and creativity has been splurged right from the beginning till the end. The connection which these animals could create is unimaginable. The beauty of nature was spell-binding and it leaves you with no words to describe.

I loved the visualization of the forest and the color combination used which was so vibrant and pleasant. No one can even think of creating such a beautiful forest if at all something like this really exist in the world which oozes beauty like anything. The calmness, greenery, birds chipping, scary hills etc are a real visual treat. Not to forget the dialogues, really a special mention for such brilliant words. Hanuka Matata is something that I need to keep telling myself often., it means "there are no worries".

Again here comes my favorite lines:

Adult Simba: I know what I have to do. But going back will mean facing my past. I've been running from it for so long.

[Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick]
Adult Simba: Ow! Jeez, what was that for?
Rafiki: It doesn't matter. It's in the past.
[laughs]
Adult Simba: Yeah, but it still hurts.
Rafiki: Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or... learn from it.
[swings his stick at Simba again who ducks out of the way]
Rafiki: Ha. You See? So what are you going to do?
Adult Simba: First, I'm gonna take your stick.
[Simba snatches Rafiki's stick and throws it and Rafiki runs to grab it]
Rafiki: No, not the stick! Hey, where you going?
Adult Simba: I'm going back!
Rafiki: Good! Go on! Get out of here!
[Rafiki begins laughing and screeching loudly]

These are my favorite dialogues from the movie and it means a lot to me. When reality hits you through movies, nothing like that to get charged up instantly. For people who are running away from the past, pause wherever you're and take a look at it for a moment. There is nothing wrong in looking behind and learning something from it.

No words to describe the wholesome feeling of watching this movie and I guess that I got the message right from this movie. Oh yeah not to forget my butter popcorn and cold coffee which made it up for all my enjoyment:-)

Love you little Simba, Nala, Zazu, Rafiki, Timon, Pumbaa and the LION KING Mufaza.

Google+ is here so what next???

I have been thinking to blog about Google Plus for a while now and I finally have some leisure time to write on this. Google Plus the new social networking site added to the kitty for many, raised some unexpected noise among the tech savvy crowd for having stylish looks and its great UI integration. Its almost a month now and people have raved enough and more about it for its USP, ie., to have an invitation to join Google+. The speculations about Google plus is so high that social media experts and leaders are still talking about how brands are going to leverage this exciting platform from the giant GOOGLE itself.

Being in the Web 2.0 space for sometime now, I have seen a lot of new social media platforms emerging day by day with some innovations in them but end of the day, they are stereotyped in some manner. I think the niche feeling of using any such site loses its charm after a while because there is nothing so catchy about it to stay back and use it 24/7 like Facebook. Yes I am a Facebook addict and I don't know what magic Facebook does to people. I am never intrigued to any other site like Facebook and of course Twitter.

Social Media as a medium now has garnered much more awareness and the importance of being on these platforms have been realized by the grey hair marketing heads and the ceo's of many companies in India itself. If not all, at least a descent amount of brands and products have good presence and showing some eagerness to venture into Social Media at some point. So taking this as a reference, most of the brands are present on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other viable platforms which will yield them returns must have learnt the nuisance of using the medium by now.

But, I have few arguable questions to raise at point of time:

a) So what's next wobbling in the Social Media pipeline?

b) Enough and more platforms are there but how many are being positively exploited by brands and products?

c) Is Social Media about innovating more such platforms as we move or finding sustainable solutions to perform well in the existing platforms?

I believe that the above raised questions have strong reasons to be argued and discussed as we move forward towards the future digital media as a proliferating industry. If you have any valid reasons and thoughts which will help me to find the answer do share it.

Note: *Views are my own and it doesn't belong to any group of individuals or organization*

I have a reason to Blog

Yes, after a long gap I have a reason to blog. I want to reflect my thoughts over the past 12 months which was so experimental and adventurous. Couldn’t believe that I chased life so much and have inherited a lot of maturity over the years and here I complete 24 years of life It’s my birthday today and life can’t get any better than this and the way I feel at this point of time. I am feeling completely blessed for what I am and for what I have. I have earned an independent life out of my hard work, gutsy belief system and my well-wishers who guided and held me when I needed something in life. No one can replace such wonderful angels in my life. *hugs*

I am not sure if I make sense by reflecting my thoughts through this blog, but I have a sense of satisfaction with my action. I wanted to blog after every good/bad incident happens in life but I have never felt the necessity to do so. But I think blogging after a year definitely has some meaning in what I am doing in life.

I realized that life is an adventurous game to play because you don’t know what’s in store for you next. So I like this phase of my life and enjoying every bit of it. No words to express the way people made me feel today. Unexpected calls from rare friends and it’s a good feeling that they still remember you Thank you so much for all the wonderful wishes and I feel so blessed. As I grow old responsibilities do add to my kitty slowly now. However I am trying to give my best and so wanting to feel fresh and young in life.

Happy birthday to me :-)

Random Thoughts....

It’s been really long since I took some conscious effort to write something in my blog. I mean realllllly long:) I am planning to post something regularly from now onwards, let me challenge this and do it. I want to share certain interesting things which happened in the recent past which kept me busy these many days. hmmm now I can see many faces going Garr thinking that am I totally jobless now to post something in my blog??? Not really but I think this is the time to share all the best experiences which I had.

Thought I would start narrating from the beginning but now its changed. A sudden collapse:) I got my 3rd semester results recently and I scored descent marks above 70%(let me not reveal the actual %). My 4th semester started with a huge responsibility with preparing a theses, I mean all of us in my class have to review any movie under lots (Lotsss) of parameters given in the syllabus. oppps its actually lots which all of us did. Approximately my theses came up to 150+ pages. Whoa. Believe me I am not joking and I was unable to believe myself that I wrote 90% of the content on my own.

I would rather say I just scribbled my thoughts about the movie and the process was really painful with sleepless nights, imbalance between all other routine activities. I will probably put it across like this. Usually babies expect mothers to give full attention to them all the time without doing anything else than to look after them. I can actually relate my experience of this theses creation with a baby because its the same experience. I was just thinking only about the theses for about 4-6 weeks without concentrating on other things. But it was fun and I was totally focused in finishing it on time. It is one smallest achievement in the recent past.

Meanwhile I went for a short and sweet trip to a beautiful place, ( I need a better word to describe this place) which is away from Thirupathi, its called Talakona. Ahhh amazing falls, awesome tree house, especially the monkeys and the monkey which grabbed my Liviya backbag. Its my luck I got my bag back from the monkey after a small cheating session with peanuts. As soon as I came back from this unforgettable experience I was held totally with the organizing committee of TedxChennai gang.

Another memorable event which I ever attended in my life. Though my contribution was just a pie on the whole, working with the backend process of the entire event and organizing them, Whoa. It gave me hands on experience and it created a good platform for me to network with some best people I have ever met so far. Before I could unplug myself from all this, I started to work on my study paper which I am loving it so much and I don’t know the reason why, the topic is Internet and to narrow it down I am talking about Social Media and its future with business ventures.

Its totally fun reading a lot of abstract information about social media and blah. And it’s a chain of activities that I am held with, finally I am up with my internship with Kiruba once again for next three months. Its going great with new projects and a promising learning experience so far.