Two of the culinary shows on TV didn’t treat yesterday as just “Business as usual”. They made sure that the significance of the day was taken cognizance of during the course of their show.
The first was “Chakh Le India” (NDTV Good Times). Host Aditya Bal was in the City of Joy – Calcutta. He visited Netaji Bhavan.

I must confess that I have never been much impressed by Gandhiji’s idea of a non-violent freedom struggle – especially when it resulted in heavy casualties on the Indian side. Netaji’s “tum muze khoon do, mai tumhe azadi dunga” sounded much more practical. It was a tragedy that he died in a plane crash. If we had more firebrand leaders like him around I guess we could have put a tighter leash on our errant neighbor long time back and it wouldn’t have grown to become such a nasty headache that it is now. That said however, there is no denying that all those conspiracy theories about the possibility of his surviving the plane crash and being alive in the Himalayas make good teatime stories!

So it was amazing to see all his personal belongings preserved in the same state since the days he was residing at the premises.

I have been to Calcutta once – during the Navaratri festival. It was an experience! But I have always regretted that I couldn’t see the famous Howrah Bridge :-( Now I have one more place to visit during my next trip to the city :-)

The TV Guide said that the episode of The Foodie (Times Now) was going to be at Wagah. So I tuned in hoping that I will be able to see the Change of Guard at the border amidst cheers of “भारत माता की जय”. Host Kunal Vijayakar, however, took the viewers to the National Defense Academy.

And the dining hall there had a table that was cordoned off on all sides. It was a table meant for the POWs (Prisoners of War) and MIAs (Missing in Action) – in short, for those who could not make it back home from the battlefield!