Latte with Phoenix

                 Indian cuisine is liked the world over and to cater to the hungry people,   restaurants with Indian sounding names have sprung up all over, even in remote corners where you least expect them. Foreign nationals unless they have been to India or dined at an Indian’s home, hardly know the correct taste of Indian dishes. They do not know any better. This is where the con takes place, with various non-Indians taking   advantage and dishing   out rubbish to unsuspecting foreigners; giving a bad name to Indian food in the bargain. The scam comes to light when   Indians travelling abroad or newly gone to reside there   become homesick for Indian food see a restaurant proclaiming itself as serving ‘Indian food’, visit these ‘Indian’ restaurants   in their outings,   to enjoy the dishes offered. In nearly every case, the food served there does not meet their expectations, and later on they find out that the owners are either Bangladeshi or Pakistani masquerading as ‘Indi

                 Cinema halls all over India not very long ago used to be stand alone buildings. Their owners took pride in making beautiful structures, with something unique in each hall, to make it famous. Early cinema hall had English names, no doubt influenced by the British rulers of the time, with names such as :   Palace, Capitol, Odeon, Eros, Ritz, Regal, Plaza, Jubilee, Rivoli, Orient, Mayfair, Minerva, Novelty, Excelsior, Delite, West End, Imperial etc. With Independence names took a drastic change to Indian-ness, and we saw such names come up :   Maratha Mandir, Umrao, Moti, Liberty, Golcha, Filmistan, Sheila, Khanna, Jagat, Shekhawati, Amar, Raj Mandir etc. 'Maratha Mandir', Bombay. courtsy - Twitter The public felt pride in visiting and watching their favourite film in these halls. People used to boast that they have seen a film in the famous hall of Delhi, Jaipur or Mumbai. A visit to these famous halls was photographed, remembered and discussed. Persons who h

                 The present crisis in Ukraine has vividly brought into public knowledge the shortage of an item which was under wraps for half a century:   viz-   Shortages of seats in Professional studies in India: mainly seats in Medical Colleges. Majority population of India were surprised to know that literally lakhs of our children have to slog it out in obscure countries to acquire a professional degree for their career, for continuing their dreams of life. If we go by the number of students studying medicine who had to be evacuated from Ukraine alone; the total figure of such students in 15 odd countries would definitely run into several lakhs. courtsy - Punjab Kesari Why do they go abroad for medical education ? Numbers tell the real story. Total medical colleges in India : 595 (302 govt, 218 private, 19 AIIMS, rest deemed etc). That gives 88,370 seats. 44,555 in government, 43,815 in private, rest others. Lakhs want to be Doctors. Very few seats created in 75 year

                 Visitors to my house, if they are observant enough, would find several wall clocks and time pieces in the place. Wall clocks being useful; have been put up in every room just to use them. One can just glance up to see the time without the trouble of turning your head or getting up. I find them useful. Some have been put up in the bathrooms, where you can time your singing skills. The table time pieces were in use on the children’s study table, but with their going away there is only my desk top table to put up a time piece. The others are therefore in storage. A valid question can be asked here as to why so many wall clocks etc have come into this house ? Well the answer is simple enough. With birthdays and anniversary, relatives and friends gifted us these items. Wall clocks are economical, make a large packet when gift wrapped and are useful too – so the gift giver thinks. This thinking is one of the reasons of increased sale of wall clocks in the market. But i