Delhi Confidential: Good Host

VICE PRESIDENT M Venkaiah Naidu has always been known to be a good host, with food at his parties usually being a big hit. When he hosted leaders for the all-party meeting on Sunday, the hot ginger milk that was served turned out to be quite popular. Several of the around 30 leaders who were there took multiple helpings, and Tiruchi Siva even shared his appreciation with Naidu. The ginger milk was accompanied by the option of jaggery and sugar. The south Indian breakfast served came with some home-made delicacies such as rice and jaggery cake, sweet paper like flour roll and pakodas.

Chat With Chefs

DURING HIS recent trip to Tamil Nadu, Rahul Gandhi tried his hand at cooking. He joined a group of farmer-chefs who run the famous Village Cooking Channel on YouTube. The channel has over 7.1 million subscribers. The video of Gandhi helping them cook has already garnered more than 4.5 lakh views on YouTube. The village chefs made mushroom biryani and Gandhi was seen helping them prepare onion-curd salad. Gandhi, who was accompanied by Karur MP Jothi Mani S and AICC in charge of Tamil Nadu Dinesh Gundu Rao, told them that he had seen their videos and wanted to meet them. Later, he sat down for an interaction with them during which the village chefs told him about their ambition to visit countries such as the US, Thailand, Singapore, China and Malaysia. Gandhi told them he can talk to his friend Sam Pitroda who can help arrange a trip to Chicago. He later ate the biriyani with them the village way – on a banana leaf, sitting on the floor.

‘Pressure Cookers’

AMONG THE new acquisitions in the ministries during the pandemic are file sanitisers. The briefcase-like boxes are kept at sections and also at the offices of top officers in ministries. Files are placed in them and the machine is turned on so that UV rays sanitise the files before they are sent for perusal of top officers. Informally, they are being nicknamed “pressure cooker” in some ministries. And now that a vaccine is here, the question being asked is, what will happen to these expensive products once the fear of Covid is gone.