There is a very fine line between chivalry and chauvinism, almost as fine as the one that runs betwixt the kinky and the perverse.
I don’t necessarily make such demarcations, and certainly not when it comes to sensitive matters of the bedroom, for one man’s S&M is my, I mean, another man’s romantic.

Women, I have come to realise, are never wrong. If ever it comes to pass that they are wrong and admit to it, without being asked to, run for the hills my boy for what will ensue next, even the devil can’t second guess.

The only thing even more harrowing than a woman is a woman behind the steering wheel of a car. No man ever blamed the driving authorities slackness more than when he accosted a lady driver trying to parallel park.

Being a man allows us an emotionally undisturbed view of womankind: the myriad muddles and messes, complexities and complications; a view of life when emotion overrides logic. I have often interacted with women, in a professional capacity (mine, and sometimes, theirs). Each interaction left me enriched, enraptured, and enchanted, but also mostly wounded and smiling bittersweet. This column will address issues that baffle men, but women never know why.

Before I share my experience of reading the book, Danny Boyle: In His Own Words by Amy Raphael, I must confess to one thing.

There is a certain child-like joy in pursuing things magical and even the slightest glint of a sign of it is enough to sustain belief in the most sceptical of us.
Jamie’s new book then is exactly that: a title that screams “Impossible”, an introduction that further seems to self-negate in the face of reality and ticking time. It claims that anybody, even the culinary-ly challenged can whip up a meal in precisely 30 minutes.

For a better part of the last millennium, we Indians have taken pride in all that we have given to the rest of the world.

There are many firsts from the time you pick up this book. It is the first cookery book in purple I have ever seen. It is the first that could be mistaken for chick-lit, or an upcoming sequel to Mira Nair’s Mistress of Spices. It also is perhaps the first cook book that relies more on sketches (both verbal and pictorial) than on photoshop-enhanced imagery. I guess what I am trying to say is, it all comes together and, really works.

How importa-nt is food for you? I am sure you’d travel a bit for it, like say across the town. Some of you would even kill for it? But would you die for it?

If anything is complicated to understand and extra-specially so to pronounce, blame the French. They seem to have a knack for making petit gateau aux champignons out of a molehill.