Chirag Desai

Believe it or not, but I’ve actually never spent a Diwali in India. Until this time, that is.

One side of me sees a massive festive season. Another sees just another excuse for people here to take massive break, relax and NOT work! (Most places have 8–10 days off in a row) That said, the last couple of days (and nights) have been marked by festivities all around, lights everywhere and the loudest firecrackers at night when you try to wind down for the day.

Pictures were sadly taken with a camera phone since I don’t have a proper camera around at the moment.

And for those of you who don’t know what Diwali is, I’ll leave with the (funny) explanation from Season 3 of The Office.

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djNH7C8_DfI?rel=0])

In the heart of Bandra, Mumbai lies the heart of every Indian fast food(chaat) lover- Elco Pani Puri Center. Operating since 1975, this institution has grown from small stalls to a two floor fast food center. And the quality of food has never diminished. Each dish from their ragda pattice to their dosas to the famous Mumbai chaat to their kulfi falooda to their juices, brings forth a tasty, wholesome, full of flavour experience which I have to say is the freshest possible.

This is my must go to place every year when visiting Mumbai. When you are in Mumbai next do go.

Oh, and do NOT miss the paani puri. After all we at Naihar cant do without it!

Pictured above is Dahi Batata Pri, Ragda Pattice, Paani Puri and Watermelon Juice.

Such a remarkable name for an educational entity.

What were they thinking?

Dear @EtisalatUAE, as an ISP and all, you do know we use forward slashes in URLs, right Sigh. This is in all their ads. About their ‘fastest broadband’ service, ironically.

Luckily for them, Chrome auto-corrects the address. Safari on the other hand, isn’t so smart.

And here I thought I’d be going after just the one provider today…

Actually, first of all, I do want to thank you. I mean, waiving my renewal fee and giving me lifetime validity on my phone — pure genius and you guys do maintain the best offers in the market, no doubt about that!

However I have a slight peeve.

You have a ‘more international’ option, wherein I get added credit for a limited time, but only for dialing international numbers. To be clear, I cannot use this credit for a local call.

You have an ‘out of credit’ call option, which allows me to make (only) local calls if I run out of credit on my phone. Super.

On the given day, I had credit in my ‘more international’ plan, but ran out of regular credit.

So when I needed to urgently dial a local number, I got the You do not have enough credit in your regular account to make this call. Fair enough.

I dialed in to the out of credit option, which was kind enough to tell me, You have enough balance on your phone, so you cannot use the out of credit option if you have credit.

So I cannot use my international credit to make a local call, my out of credit option to call local calls says I have balance (in my international credit which I cannot use for the local call I want to make)…so I can’t make the call.

What’s the point?

Yes, I totally did not notice the date. However, it must be salvaged, and salvaged now. *Kicks things into execution* Sorry, but you can’t say no.

The last two months have been nothing short of crazy. And not the good kind.

But this is me, starting over, trying to pull it all together. Vowing, over and over again, that next time it will be better.

I feel like a broken record.

The festival of Ganesh is marked by specialist sweets — primarily laddoos and modaks. Home-made samples of the latter for this year’s festival can be seen here.

I have the auspicious honor of putting together post number 100.

I can’t give you the cliched it’s been a long journey, because it hasn’t. But it has been a fantastic ride. The naihar food blog started with a simple concept — I wanted to take my family-derived love for food (and the fact that we ran a little catering gig on the side) and share it with the online world. But as is always the case, you want to break the mould.

What naihar has turned into today is a fantastic collaboration of people who love their food — and therefore, people who write with a passion — which has brought out a unique blend to this blog.

I can’t seem to put naihar in a category of a review blog, an out-and-out food blog or even a recipe blog. It’s a fun mashup of all three. We’ve covered restaurants in the US, UK, UAE and India thus far. We’ve concocted recipes of our own that look as amazing as they taste. And we’ve focused on single food items at times not just entire menus, so you know where to satisfy those cravings (or where *not* to). Oh, and the cake extravaganza!

What’s up ahead? Well, obviously more coverage of places to eat, things to make and cravings to satisfy. Better pictures. Author profiles. And some interesting changes. We’re working on collaborating with some brilliant foodies out there who could bring an interesting spin to the blog, some food outings and more.

To our followers, we hope you enjoy what we have in store. If you’ve got a moment, do drop us a comment and let us know if there are things you like (and what you don’t really like) and it’ll help our amazing authors cater their posts a little.

Finally, a gracious nod to our unrelenting contributors. I’m committing to the one cliche for the post here: Guys, we could NOT have this without you. Keep the food and, almost as importantly, the pictures coming.

Happy Fooding!

I know *exactly* what they mean…