Adhi Potoba

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In Pune, however, breakfast almost seems to be a second thought. It’s something you do between getting dressed for work or school and leaving the house. I for one have been brought up on a steady breakfast of Carbury’s drinking chocolate (the one that came in the blue tin) and Britannia Nice biscuits . (Hello diabetes!) Shoving the biscuits in my mouth and washing it down with chocolate milk hot enough to take the top layer off your gullet. All this mostly while the school bus would stand outside honking the horn and my mother, trying in vain, to ask the driver to wait just one more minute till her son got his shit together. Unfortunately, no matter how old you get or where you go in the world, breakfasts might change, but the chaotic morning scene remains the same. On the weekends however, we try to bring back some sanity to our lives and what better way to start than with a healthy, hearty sit-down breakfast. Ingredients 3 cu...

On returning to New York as a married couple, our ‘gruha pravesh’ involved pushing huge suitcases packed to the maximum allowable baggage allowance across the threshold. The only way a true desi travels and something I just can’t explain to my wife. I’m still on a high from all the pampering a prodigal son gets on his brief, infrequent visits home. The trick however is the leave before the novelty wears off. Now back in my apartment, as I was having my Sunday morning chai, I looked at my Nice biscuits (my favourite biscuits), which has turned limp from moisture as they were pretty old. Quite a contrast to the Sunday mornings back home. When I lived in Pune, the family of one of the boys that worked for us lived in Tulsibaug. Although he lived with us all week, he would visit his family every weekend, leaving on Friday evening and returning early morning on Sunday. One of his most important duties (at least according to me) was to go to Hindustan Bakery on the way back and pick up a Kg ...