Lassi with Lavina reaches 100.5 k monthly visitors on Pinterest with evocative images from Indian art, Bollywood, celebrities, food & travel for the India lover
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Books of every stripe, the Internet and family folk lore are full of great advice on how to live life – the trouble is it’s an overwhelming tsunami of information!
What do you read, what do you absorb and what do you discard? It’s like having an unending army of guides to take you through the maze of life!
Let’s take the journey together!
3638 people reached on Lassi with Lavina Nandita Godbole, Shagun Mehandru and 42 others Roshni…
‘Wordsmith’ – I like the feel of the word, its heft. It has echoes of blacksmith, silversmith, goldsmith – someone hardy and dedicated, working with raw material over fire, shaping it and transforming it into something which didn’t exist before.
Published articles by Lavina Melwani in The Hindu, Scroll, Quartz, Outlook, Beliefnet and other publications.
What better way to start a new blog than with Ganesha, the Lord of New Beginnings? Give him whichever name you choose – He is that consciousness that is within us and around us and in the very breath we take.
Now you can read Lassi with Lavina in Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, French, Italian – almost a hundred different languages! Family members who don’t know English can now taste the lassi too!
Spring seems to be in a very confused state of mind. It’s officially Spring today but my backyard is still looking like a beautiful Christmas card!
It’s almost as if Spring decided to go to a masquerade ball dressed up as Old Man Winter. Or is Spring a frivilous kid costumed in winter white for Halloween?
I took a picture for the cool memory of this during the heat and humidity of a New York summer when the blazing sidewalk bites through your sandals and no amount of lemonade can quench your thirst!
I had just got out of my car when I came across two complete opposites, the big and the small, the tall and the short – a humungous stretch limousine and one of the tiniest cars I’ve ever seen, one of the frugal Smart cars.
The difference between the two was so dramatic that I couldn’t help thinking of the very different lives these two autos must be leading. One would need a huge garage, an unending supply of gas to guzzle and a chauffeur to pamper it; the other, no gas, no space, no fuss. One looked a star, the other a sparrow. A little like different human lives, of kings and commoners.
Indian cooking fans! Welcome to Lassi with Lavina’s blog which flies you to quite another universe – Foodiesphere! Alka Keswani of Sindhi Rasoi.shares some very authentic, typical home recipes for vegetarian Sindhi food which have been made by grandmas and mothers for decades. Sindh is the lost homeland of hundreds of thousands of Hindu Sindhis who had to flee as refugees in the Partition of 1947, and their food, culture and language are the anchors they hold on to.
The Chatty Divas bring you their insights on East and West, and on India and America. Here are some of the best posts from them – witty, friendly and almost always, wise! Kriti Mukherjee and Sulekha Rawat take you into their world and show you Modern India as it is lived by everyday people.
Guest Blog – The Chatty Divas
I also invite you to add your voice to the daily blog, 24/7 – Talk is Cheap. I hope this will be a fun Tower of Babel, with many voices discussing many topics. In the beginning I tentatively bring one solitary voice – my own – and hope many others will join in. Be it Indian art, movies, books or spirituality – do bring in your point of view.
“My mother hasn’t forgotten how to bake a cake but she sometimes doesn’t remember all the ingredients, missing out a few in the process. She recounts funny incidents making us laugh heartily with her but she repeats them again after a while, forgetting that she had already shared the same with us a couple of hours earlier. It kills me to see her uncertainty and confusion. However, the only consolation is her lack of awareness of this condition.
I fear forgetting basic things like reading or writing; the mere thought of losing my memories is terrifying. What if one day I wake up and don’t recognize my family members, forget their names and how much I love them?” Guest Blog – Chatty Divas
Best of the Web – India’s Tall Ambitions
How should India spend $340 million? Watch the video and give your opinion!
“I look down at my hands and admire the intricate pattern of henna applied on my palms for Karva Chauth, the social and seasonal festival for the welfare of one’s spouse.
On the evening before the big day, women were getting their hands hennaed for the big night. Those who couldn’t pick up the snacks and eat due to the wet henna on their hands were being fed by friends whose hands were dry. Rima popped a potato wedge in my mouth and came back a while later with a rasgulla to feed me. I had never been fed by strangers but it didn’t feel like she was one.”
Guest Blog – Chatty Divas
“I have to say that I was very blessed as a child as I grew up in a family that was blessed with great cooks! My dad is amazing at making meat based dishes, my mother – I think she should be called the Vegetable Whisperer – has a delightful way with vegetables and pretty much my entire extended family either cooks well or knows where to take you for a great meal!
My fondest memory as a child is sitting in the kitchen with my dad and watching him cook his legendary butter chicken. Not only did I know the dish would turn out amazing (it always did) but it was a time for us to connect and talk about his world travels. I adored listening to his stories and was thrilled whenever he would make this dish as it meant he would be in a mood (and have time) to talk!”
Monica Bhide chats with the Single Desi on Food, Family – and recipes for the perfect date!
“Do you take responsibility for the emotional pain that others have inflicted on you? Do you feel excessively bad? Do you blame yourself for not being good enough to please this person? Do you walk away? Do you not care?
Some of us take life very seriously; some of us don’t take life seriously enough. Some of us are in between. No matter what category you fall into, you can be damaged by other people’s emotional outbursts or nasty actions. As a psychologist, I cannot stress enough the importance of moving on and letting go.”
Guest Blog: The Single Desi. Photo: Harpreet Thinking
“It seems my tongue has two black strips, like a runway’s tarmac, running along its entire length. It’s an old Indian superstition that people who have black spots on their tongue are capable of predicting things and what they say or wish for comes true. I am the queen of predictions and the mirror of the future.”
Can words spoken in jest come true? Is there such a thing is a ‘black tongue’? Sulekha Rawat explores this less traveled road and wonders whether she is really psychic and whether words spoken without thought can actually come true.
Guest Blog – Chatty Divas. Photo: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³
When is social media too much? When can we call it enough? When does social media become invasive and when do we start de-friending people? Are we just violating each other’s privacy or are we getting what we always secretly wanted – an insight into other people’s lives?
On the blog Sex and the Single Desi, Monica Marwah looks at the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of social media.
(Photo – Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)
‘Drink plenty of water and stay out of the sun!’ says makeup wiz Karuna Chani who has made up countless brides and brightened international magazines. Here she talks with Monica Marwah of Sex and the Single Desi on beauty, Priyanka Chopra, makeup tips and her take on the single desi scene.
Guest blog: Sex and the Single Desi