Venkat's Clubhouse, etc

-So, to fill in on lunch at Venkat’s Clubhouse, we had white rice, biryani rice, curried cauliflower and potatoes, a delicious chickpea dish with garam marsala, dal and roti, all expertly cooked by Raj. We were then served Chai, a very sweet milky spiced tea.


Dinner this evening was with our former neighbors Annie and Shibou Mathew. They lived next door for several years in the mid 2000’s while Annie was working at the Indian Embassy. Her territory was the entire Western Hemisphere for the Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India. She is now back in Delhi as one of the Principal Directors of that office with even more responsibilities. Rowena, their older daughter, who was in Harry’s class at Whitman, finished college last year as university in India in 3 rather than 4 years. She is doing a masters in Environmental Planning and Strategy where the first year of the program is spent at a university in Budapest and the 2nd year is spent at a university on one of the Greek Islands. We had a delicious dinner at their home with them and their younger daughter Shannon, a friend of Jenna Kress’s (who she is still in touch with). Since this would not be a legitimate Rockower blog without describing what we ate—we had samosas first followed by chicken curry, rice dal, beans, cauliflower with spices, and another flat bread that was a typical south Indian dish (Annie and Shibou’s families both hail from Chennai, although they both were raised in Delhi). We had a delicious sweet for desert that was round like a donut hole and had cardoman and dried fruit in it. Annie’s driver picked us up at the hotel and returned us there at the end of the evening. As with all cars trying to approach our hotel, his car was stopped and the trunk and hood opened and searched before we were allowed to approach the hotel. AHS