The Multi-Specialty Cuisines

A couple of months ago I had read an article on the restaurants in the city which have been going through a change of the menu they offered. The article stated that the traditional outlook of specialty restaurants were slowly in a state of becoming the more infamous multi-cuisine restaurant. The Pasta shops now would serve a variety of Continental and Chinese, the Indian specialty had some Chinese menu to it or that the Chinese corner now had some Indian dish to it. I was quite surprised at the revelation and as I would enjoy a meal in a restaurant I was actually reminded of this trend when I would see the menu change over a period of time and the alarming menu that would be presented to me.

In a recent outing to a Pizza joint, I was surprised to see a menu card that had more items other than a pizza. They had starters, pasta, soups and salads along with desert. While in the past, we would always venture to different places to have the choice of food that would tickle our palates now we can enjoy the same in the pleasures of a single place. This is a very good but yet and ugly trend that is being circulated in the city and we are not realizing what we are actually missing.

The times taken to prepare a dish along with the natural flavours are lost. Customers want it as soon as possible and are not ready to wait for their meal they are impatient. In a bid to satisfy the customer, restaurants are starting to employ quick and modern methods of cooking have changed the way the food would traditionally taste, the emphasis is on the presentation and not on the flavours. The food looks good but when you eat it, there is a definite let down in the taste and the flavours. Have you ever eaten a tandoori dish from a restaurant recently, 9 out of 10 times your hands will be red by the time you are done with your meal because of the excess colouring used to give the touch of red to the dish. The pasta is always either too dry or too mushy due to the stagnation in open air before it is served.

If you are a person of admirable taste and you relish what you eat, these are things that you will notice the next time you are out and enjoying an overpriced dish that has lost its flavor from the start.

• Look to see the ambience of the place, there is a definite evidence to look at the worthiness of the place and the seriousness in the owners to make the customers comfortable and welcomed.
• How are the stewards, waiters dressed? This is a clear indication on the hygiene of the outlet and the health concerns that govern the food preparations.
• The cutlery is an important read. If they are washed properly and shine in the light on the tube lights or fluorescent lights. They are the right place to be.
• The serving pattern is another important aspect of the process. Is the serving done in process or in a wayword manner? lets not follow the western philosophies of serving, there may be a reason for it but in India we like to be served with love and affection to enjoy the food we eat. 
• The last and most important aspect is to taste the food and reason out the flavours that are burried in the pores of the dish you have ordered or has been recommended by the server. This will be the judge of all the other reasons that you may forgo, like the ambience, the hygiene, the service process, the taste and the texture of the dish is the reason why we go to the outlet more than once.

Of course, there are places that have retained the traditional way of cooking and the food is mouthwatering and delicious. Places where you would not only recommend but would frequent yourself. Its time we demand quality rather than look at the quantity of the food at reasonable prices.

Was India hit by recession?

I have been in a continuous argument with a number of colleagues who have spent their careers in finance and its ancillaries if India was ever hit with recession? Initially,at the end of 2008 and start of 2009, all of them said yes. They argued that India is another country that is affected by recession as their business have been affected like the rest of the world with the US economy. Later by the mid year of 2009 they changed their stand and said India was not really hit by recession but an economic slowdown and there was a slow recovery that was happening for the industries.

I being a graduate in Finance did understand some basics of finance although I never had a career in finance due to my aversion to sitting in a room and working with numbers. As my professor would say, there is a story behind all the numbers. I prefer reading a story that has words in it rather than numbers. I never did understand why did people promote the assumption that India was hit by recession ever and I felt proud that unlike the so called financial gurus of our country I had the simple logic of determining that India was never hit with recession. You see for an economy to be hit with recession it has to have a pronounced deflation for a consective of two quarters. India had it for only one quarter. The deflation was for the Export Vs Import Market and not for the domestic market which has not seen a 4% inflation rate for many years now. So we were never in a red because our domestic market was always on a growth mode but yes our international markets were definitely affected for a short period of time.

The end result, India was not hit with recession! I then wonder why a number of people lost their jobs in India in the name of recession?

Honest Diplomacy

“Honest Is the Best Policy” seems to be a saying that has remained as words with no action to it. Have you ever noticed the trend lately that when you are honest you’re rewarded with some punishment rather than an appreciation for the honesty shown. Take any instance in your life, when in school and we committed a mistake we were rewarded with either kneeling in front of the class, a beating or to the extremes of suspension. When we are honest about our feelings with our boy/girl friend, who we were intimate with it, we were rewarded with anger or rejection. When we are honest with our jobs and voice our honest opinions against the wrongs of the senior or colleague, we are rewarded with demotion or treated as an outcast or worse termination. When we try to be honest with our spouse, it is rewarded with fights and worse a divorce, which has actually become a flavor of the day.

It is so ironic that throughout our childhood we are always taught to be honest and true to our feelings and actions. This is as long as we are in the care of our parents and school’s comfort but as we enter into the senior stages of our lives and close in to the threshold of a career it seems that honesty is the worst policy and with every honest word uttered there is a sense of agitation against you. The world starts to treat you as a handicap and fails to understand the importance of your words and your action of being honest.

There was nothing to worry for all the honest people, because after the sunset comes the sunrise and we were introduced to a new fundamental of life, “Diplomacy”. This is the new strategy that we would need to use to grow to the success; defined by our parents and society in general. Diplomacy is the way of life, smile at the wrong and walk past the fallen. In the lingo of the corporate world, SYA(Save Your Arse). It clearly means, steer away from those who are trying to be honest in this cruel world, turn a blind eye to the righteous and welcome the wrongs and dishonesty into the place of work or life by itself. If we stop and take a look around us we will be surprised that we are engulfed by this sin and yet we are reluctant to change it.

Let us take a famous example. Andre Agassi, is a well known tennis player having won many Tennis grand slams in his prime. In his recent book, he mentioned that he was addicted to pleasure drugs during his prime as he was in a bout of depression and had to cope with it. In no way, were the drugs enhancing his playing skills; it was his personal abilities that enabled him to win. However, on his honest revelation in his book he was taunted, put down and said it’s a shame that he had taken the drugs, as it was a violation of the code of conduct for the sports fraternity. I am not glorifying the wrong here or saying that what he did was right. I am stressing on the point that had he not written about it in his book none of us would have know about it and none of us would have had a second opinion about him. Not even the sports bodies that are suddenly making a hue and cry about the whole issue. They never detected it when he was taking it, let alone now. They cannot even prove that he did take the drugs and that it was not a simple publicity stunt by the sportsman to sell his book.

“It’s not about what you say but what is perceived by the other person.” This is what a friend of mine had shared with me in the early days of my college as I was among those honest lot of people who were mostly shunned away for their straightforward and honest opinion. Today I am the diplomatic and calm person who had been battered with society’s irony of honesty and am a good diplomat. Thanks to the change in me I suddenly have more friends and more acquaintances who are becoming friends. Hence, I say to all those who are entering into the threshold of their careers and to those who are straightforward in their approach. In the 21st century, honesty is taking a break and it’s DIPLOMACY that has become the best policy for all.

Children of Honesty

I have had the experience of telling the truth and being punished for it but I have refused to change my ways. I have always thought that honesty is the best policy no matter what the circumstances. It keeps me confident and I am not really bothered at the end of what the world says? Some have appreciated me for this skill and some have shunned me away as they think that honesty will get me no where in todays world. How did I develop this skill in me? Well its been only 3 years since I adopted this skill set and it was taught to me by a child of 2 years.

My nephew, now 5 years old, had this uncanny habit of being honest and blunt about his actions and thoughts. He must have been a little over 2 and being very attached to me used to love going on short bike rides with me. On one such bike ride, I was to go and buy some goodies for christmas from a near by shopping mall. We were maybe the first to enter the mall that morning and while in the mall, we passed a bakery which had some very good cookies and the both of us wanted to taste some. There was an offer at the bakery of buying 1 kg of cookies and getting a christmas CD and a visit to Santa Claus. I thought of this as a good occasion to introduce him to Santa Clause and I asked for his approval if he wanted to see Santa which he gladly agreed to in the greed of having the cookies.

We bought the cookies and were enjoying it as we walked towards the stall which was housing Santa Clause and all the children were meeting him there. Since we were the first we had all the volunteers approaching us and greeting us. They were some good looking women in the enterance who captured my attention and also my nephews as he was dumb founded and out of words when he saw them and greeted them with silence. As we proceeded into the stall, he took notice of a man in a red suit with big white beard and didnt budge a step ahead. He did not want to proceed any further as he was scared off his wits, I carried him and sat next to Santa Clause in the hope that he will not feel scared if I were to show him that there was nothing wrong with it. But he was reluctant to let go of me or be anywhere near Santa. He held on to me for his life and wouldnt let go. I did not want to push it so I clicked a picture and moved out of the stall. As we excited the stall he stopped crying and was all normal again(thanks to the beautiful helpers in red). I kept teasing him on the way back home that he got scared of Santa Clause when he had agreed to meet him.

On reaching home, he burst out to his mother, "Momma, you know I cried. I cried because I got scared of Santa Clause!" I was stunned, I thought he would be so ashamed of the incident that he would not want to share it with anyone, on the contrary he was the one promoting his story and narrating the incident to everyone of what had happened? This blew me away, there were many other incidents which showcased how this child was so proud of his flaws and had no restrictions of telling the world of it. But we as matured adults are scared to show our weakness or flaws to the world in the fear that we will be ridiculed or made fun of!

I proudly say that it was nephew who inculcated the sense of true honesty in me and has helped me grow into a better person. I am not sure if even today he knows what a great teaching he has imparted to me. When he could barely speak clear words his actions were loud enough for me to take notice and inculcate the same into my life!

Say what you need to say!!!

There have been times in our lives when we wished we could just open our mouths and blurt the first thought that came to our minds and say what we actually feel to the person in front of us. It might have been our boss, or our spouse or our parents or friends or anyone who we knew. But for some odd reason we were not able to speak it out loud and we were always held back by some stupid reason of guilt or pressure or just that we didnt want the other person to feel bad by our comments or just that we were so gutless to speak our minds out loud.

Today, when I look back and think if I ever experienced such an experience I realise I always spoke my heart out and was as blunt as a butter knife. There was no holding back to what the other person would feel or what the boss would think if I spoke out too loud but thats also the problem. Diplomacy has been my weakness and its not been a forte that I can boast of very proudly. Although, I am surrounded by people who are champions of diplomacy and have actually helped me improve in my diplomacy towards my work and family much better. These are the friends who wouldnt even tell me anything if I was as wrong as the left and didnt know what I was saying and when. But they did not want to hurt my feelings and have a bad regard towards them.

These same people wouldnt say anything wrong to their own family members because they felt that it was their obligation to keep their family members smiling. They had for some reason taken the burden on their shoulders to make sure that everyone was happy but themselves. The funny part was that while they tried to keep the others happy and kept themselves unhappy, they successfully managed to keep everyone disgusted and unhappy. Its when they realised what was the cause of it and took some small steps to change the present that the smiles started to return to everyone and they themselves were so much more happier than before. You may wonder what did they do?

Very simple, they spoke their hearts desire when it mattered. If they felt tired after a long day in the office and wanted to stay at home instead of going to a relatives house or eating at a restaurant, they just said it. The food or the meeting with the relative was not important the fact that they started to reject the others request for their happiness and started to focus on themselves gave them the pleasure of being independant and care free with responsibility.

So my word for all of you out there, say what you need to say when you need to say!!!