January in Jaipur

18 January, 2016: I landed in Jaipur and shall be here for seven to ten days. January is the month to be in Jaipur as the whole month is full of interesting activities and events. Film fest, Litfest, polo tournaments, vintage car exhibition and race, kite flying and musical evenings. I also love the January weather of Jaipur and the evening dinners around bonfires.

During the approaching weekend, I will be hosting a dinner in Jaipur to celebrate the month of January. I was in Jaipur last week and just got a day on the night of January 12 in city.

I was there to attend another series of Kalam event with famous shayar Sheen Kaaf Nizam. Sheen was born in India in 1947 in Jodhpur. He is an urdu poet and literary scholar. His birth name is Shiv Kishan. Sheen Kaaf Nizam is his pen name.

I also hosted a small dinner for him and invited few Urdu authors at the open terrace of Hotel Marriot.

Yesterday, while in Kolkata, I went to The Oberoi Grand for dinner. Every winter I at least once make it a point to go to the poolside. But yesterday, I decided at about 10:30 pm to go there. The head chef of the hotel, Saurav Banerjee, informed me that the poolside was booked for some private party.

Instead, he offered me a quite table at the Coffee Shop and I readily agreed to it.

Honestly, I had a one of the best meals in recent times in a Kolkata hotel. I gave more then 100 per cent to the dahi kebab receipe.

On Saturday evening I was at The Conclave on invitation from Lakhi Daswani, his wife and few of his relatives for dinner. I had met Lakhi Daswani when I first visited Sao Paolo in Brazil some fifteen years ago. At that time he used to run the finest Indian restaurant of Latin America called Tandoor and it continues till date.

Lakhi and I were in touch on a regular basis then. After that, I met him on Saturday. Lakhi, more than a restaurateur, is known among his friends for his sense of humour. It was good to meet him. It was nice and kind of him to touch base with me during his trip to India. He landed at 5 pm on Saturday and was with me till 8 pm.

Before going to The Oberoi Grand yesterday I had a brief meeting with Shatrughan Sinha at the Park Hotel.

I also dropped in at the Park Hotel and waited for the closing dinner of Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival.

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