Meal prep

Been a busy Sunday spent planning, cooking and organising meals for the week.

Tried the Colmans Chicken Supreme and Maggi So Juicy Thai Green Curry mixes. So easy to prepare.

I swapped the semi skimmed milk for skimmed milk in both recipes. If divided into 3 portions each, it's under 250 calories and can be accompanied by a side salad or rice for a full meal.

Hello Summer

Hello Summer indeed! So excited that this arrived. It's time to take it up a notch so that I can look and feel healthier by the time summer is here. Lockdown has made it especially hard.

I have been using the www.myfitnesspal.com website lately to kick-start calorie counting. The app is amazing as their database of foods is endless. You can even scan barcodes of products or create your own recipes to get details of the nutritional values of what you are eating.

But I am a traditional pen and paper girl, so I couldn't resist this beautiful and cheerful planner from www.princessplanning.co.uk 

The loaded bundles are a great way to start as they come with a 12-weeks' worth of planning (with weekly and daily inserts), a few different countdowns and weigh in pages, loads of stickers, and a pen. The lovely Charlotte even added a little keyring gift and a personalised note. ❤️ The quality is top notch and her designs are lush.

Sunday will be my weigh day (🤞for tomorrow) and also the start or my week. That gives me Saturday to do all my planning and any food shopping. This will be so helpful during the week, especially as I'm working from home during lockdown, and I won't need to wander about the kitchen trying to figure out what to eat.

Use code PP10 for 10% off.

Covid19 London

It has been more than a decade since I last published a blog post. And what better time to put words on the page than during a time of extreme stress for the entire world. I had my world turned upside down due to the Covid19 pandemic, but was lucky that my family and I were safe and healthy, and financially unscathed.  

There were clear, unpolluted skies in London in March 2020. It was like a ghost town with everyone at home. The pulse of the city had gone, but I was hopeful it would be back soon when safe again. This photo was taken during one of my sessions of daily mandated exercise in Limehouse at the Marina. 

My India

For many years I've made important decisions in my life with a single aim in mind - to get out of India. While many have turned their noses up at me, judging me as they support me, others have vociferously stood up for their country. I've faced criticism and am often called a traitor. But when the reason behind my actions are finally questioned, friends and family have invariably taken a step back and agreed with me.

Let me begin by saying that I am, and will always be, an Indian. I am proud to say so and I do my part as a citizen of a country I love. I follow rules, I do not break the law, I exercise my right to vote, I encourage friends abroad to visit and see what the country has to offer. I was born and brought up here and India is ingrained in me. The country is perfect, but the people are not. Civic sense is unknown and if I begin to pick on each and every offence that I see committed in a single day here, I could go on for pages.

Politicians are the self proclaimed moral police in this country. Their vote bank lies in the rural masses. Urban India is a small proportion of their votes and they preach conservativeness. An uproar in the media and in big cities is fleeting. Tomorrow everything is forgotten and the same people who encourage molestation of women are at the seat of power.

How, then, can a woman feel free in this country? Can she walk down a busy street and not have a man sing vulgar songs at her as she passes by? Can she dress as she would feel comfortable? Even a pair of jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt is enough to draw stares. I've been eve teased in a crowded DTC bus in a modest salwar kameez. I'm often told that Delhi is an unsafe city for women and Mumbai is the place to be. I beg to differ. In the 7 months I spent in Mumbai I was harrassed on several occassions - in the Mumbai local train, walking in Churchgate station, sitting in an auto rickshaw in Malad, walking on Marine Drive. My younger sister visited me for 10 days and was a victim too.

Why should I want to live in a country where the people are not proud of who they are? Can you respect a woman as an equal, someone who has the right to do as she pleases? Can you refrain from crossing the yellow line on the road when stuck in heavy traffic? If you break a rule and are caught, do you have the guts to accept your mistake and pay your dues or would you prefer to slink away with a bribe? Give me a reason to live in a country where I fear rape, physical assault and criticism if I choose to walk into a pub in a pair of shorts and order myself a Cosmopolitan?

And If That Wasn't Enough

As if things couldn't get any sleepier, we unanimously decided not to take a snorkeling/diving/island/boat tour then next day. The sea was too choppy for our liking and we didn't want get lost at sea or have our tour called off mid-way. Instead, we set off for Railay beach. What fascinated us about this place was that several travelers had recommended this beach over Ao Nang. Railay is a beach accessible only by long tail boat from certain piers along the Krabi coastline. Motorboats do ply, but it's no fun if you don't do it the proper way - the way the locals do it. Unfortunately, due to the weather and the high tide, boats were not leaving from the 2 piers at Ao Nang beach. SO and I had to catch a Songthaew (a tuk-tuk made by fitting a contraption with seats onto a scooty) to the nearest pier at Ao Nam Mao. We had to wade through knee-deep water to get to the boat, had to somehow manage to jump into the rickety thing and found ourselves a seat. 60 baht for a one-way trip was a little steep for our liking, but we were not about to turn away.

The boat-ride was bumpy, and thankfully neither of us got sea-sick. Half an hour later, we were jumping into knee-deep water again, thanking our stars that we'd had the presence of mind to wear shorts. We were the only tourists on the boat, and by the time we managed to wade to solid ground, there was noone in sight. Was this the Railay everyone had raved about? The clouds decided to give way to the sun and we were burning, literally. I had forgotten to use sunscreen and had forgotten to carry it with me as well. Succumbing to the heat we fell into a shack where we ordered cold coffee. Referring to our Lonely Planet, we got our bearings and found out that we were on the wrong side of the island. A short walk through a couple of resorts and we were at the other side. It boasted of a short expanse of beach sans hawkers, beach chairs, and people. It was unbelievable. We had stumbled upon the perfect uninhabited beach that we imagined shipwrecks to lead you to. But then again, such serenity and isolation is not appeciated for long if you're not carrying food with you. 100 meters from the water was a restaurant that seemed to be the only one around. That was the centre of all action and, as we sat down for a quick bite, we grabbed the last available table. So that's where everyone had been hiding!

After lunch we walked a little further to find a second-hand bookstore and mountaineering guides. Railay is known for its rock formations which are conducive to climbing. Neither SO nor I are of the climbing sort, so we passed on that and took the marginally longer walk back to catch a boat back to Ao Nam Mao. We avoided falling prey to the offers made by the self-proclaimed boat organizers. With no boat in site, they offered to charter one specially for us at an exhorbitant price of 1000 baht. They tried to scare us by saying that that would be the only way off the island for us. We ignored them, and sure enough, half an hour later we were on our way back in a normal boat alongside the locals. The taxi ride back to Ao Nang was done in silence as it sunk in that our Krabi sojourn was almost over. As we walked to one end of Ao Nang beach, I urged SO to explore the extension of the beach that was a part of a resort. Stepping into the area we were pleasantly surprised to find that that too was a part of the public beach. Elderly ladies thronged us with rate cards in their hands for Thai massages. We randomly picked a lady, haggled with her, came to a price acceptable by both parties and followed her as she hurried past the others.

We crossed a boat turned into a bar - The Last Fisherman, both of us making a mental note to catch a drink there later. The massage parlour (!) was an open air contraption with 4 matresses laid out side-by-side. We were greeted with pineapple, part of the staple diet in Thailand and made to wait until a group of 4 Japanese tourists were being massaged. When our turn came, I looked out at the adjoining sea and wondered if there ever was a place as perfect as this. The massage was soothing to my aching limbs from the day before spent climbing Wat Tham Suea, and the sea breeze and gritty sand in my teeth made it all the more authentic thai. In a state of delirium, we made our way to the Last Fisherman. It began to pour when we had hardly downed our first drink. We moved from the beach to the bar, which had been carved out of an actual boat. What started out as a drink each turned into many and we drowned our departure sorrows in the best watering hole we had ever been to. We booked a cab on the way back to the hotel as the bus service started too late for us to be able to catch our morning flight to Bangkok. We packed our bags in silence and SO looked forward to his last breakfast buffet at the Krabi resort.

We rose extra early the next morning because of a combination of my paranoia about missing our flight and SO's excitement over breakfast. We stuffed our faces right at a table a few feet away from the sea and counted down to our flight time.