Manu's Medley

The web series Heeramandi , The Diamond Bazaar, written, directed and produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, is a historical drama based on the life of courtesans (tawaifs) during the pre-independence era. Ever since Heeramandi was released on Netflix, the internet is flooded by Heeramandi's success parties, reviews, interviews and memes. But what is the true story of Heeramandi? I will try to share few insights I gathered, along with my review of this 8 episode series.  Heera-mandi translates to Diamond-Market in Urdu. The story dates back to Mughal period. The then Prime Minister of Punjab (undivided India) Heera Singh Dogra, established a Market (Bazaar/ Mandi) as an economic center to promote trade. The place was named after him - Heera's market, so Heeramandi. To promote the economic hub further, they brought women from different places who were well trained in various art forms like dance, poetry, music etc. to make it a cultural hub too. A fort was constructed closer to the ...

Today, 7 out of 10 videos on social media are related to food, out of which half a bunch are on lunchbox recipes. Every thing that gets packed into the lunch bag, isn't prepared straight-forward. If you accidentally click some random video mesmerized by the aesthetics, your social media accounts will be flooded with tons of such videos/ reels. I recently came across someone preparing peppa pig idlis, flower dosas, all nuts (cashew, almond, walnut etc.) chutney (instead of the regular idli, dosa and chutney). Someone packed colourful pooris (as part of their holi-lunch series). Another person made variety rice, dal, roti, egg curry and amrakand - all from scratch for the lunch box. And there are millions of similar videos on internet from all over the world.  After watching few of my food videos, even my friends ask how I make those varieties daily. I politely respond and move on. I post videos (under the name Manu's Menu, on my youtube channel) only whenever I think it might he...