Category: Home, Kitchen and Decor

Have your drink, give me your empty bottles

I grew up surrounded by money plants in bottles that were in the second innings of their lives. Perhaps that is why when I see any 'good looking' alcohol bottles, my first instinct is - when would these be empty of their contents and be mine? Mine to put in dried roses or flowers that I save from withering bouquets, or to put in a feather or a paintbrush?

An ode to the fuchsia plant, and to gardens that pleasure our hearts

I have fallen in love with the fuschia flowers. I hadn't encountered fuschia whilst we lived in India, but the more I saw of them in Ireland, the more they began to embed themselves in my heart. Their reds, pinks, purples, blues...The way they hang upside down, like little chandeliers made of rainbows. Or ballerinas in colourful outfits and multiple feet! I have also derived a very precious pleasure, one that I cannot quite articulate, by picking up the fallen fuschia flowers in our balcony. It takes me back to a time when I used to pick up and gather the parijat flowers in my mother's garden.

Star of our kitchen – the humble pressure cooker

As an Indian, I have grown up with the familiar sound of a pressure cooker whistling each morning. Sometimes, you would hear a lot of whistles at the same time or in the same hour - it would be your neighbours doing their cooking and their cookers whistling in sync with yours. So the sound of the whistling is not alien or discomforting to me.