Best of Weekender: From a candid chat with stand-up comic Aravind SA to a look at Chef Manish Mehrotra’s new menu

Stand-up comic Aravind SA’s highly successful first show Madrasi Da and his particular brand of Lungi Dance went viral. And now, his second show ‘I Was Not Ready Da' is now available on Amazon Prime Video.

Aravind SA is incredibly funny, but his seriousness about his brand of comedy is an eye-opener. He says comedy is not all about laughs. Stand-up is a painstaking process, one that involves hundreds of hours of hard work to make people laugh for two hours. Comedy has to be an "expression of your honesty and whatever excites you".

Read all about Aravind’s journey and how he navigated through the stand-up comedy world.

Indian Accent is a progressive Indian restaurant that ranked 60th among the world's 50 best restaurants in 2020. The man behind these milestones is Chef Manish Mehrotra, for whom 2020 began on a great note. But the pandemic that gripped the world placed the restaurant industry on an unprecedented hiatus. Indian Accent wasn’t exempt from the aftermath either.

To entice food lovers to their much-loved dining space, Mehrotra’s ingenious idea has been to introduce a chaat menu, as an experimental tasting menu available only for lunch at their restaurant in Delhi. He also put many safety strategies in place so that dining out was easy and safe for his guests.

Read all about Manish’s new menu and strategies to get back to normal amid the pandemic.

Fans of rapper Siri Narayan may love the way she lit up the hip-hop scene in the country with her vivacious moves and rapping in multiple languages, but they might not know that this Bengaluru-based artiste has learnt Carnatic music and can play the veena too. She is one of the few female rappers in the country who raps in Kannada, Telugu, English, and Hindi.

Whether it was her track My Jam or her singles like ‘Gold’, ‘Live It’ or ‘Tu Bas Naach’, she has increased her fan base exponentially with her skillful use of language and the mastery of her medium.

Don’t miss our interaction with Siri where she talks about the challenges of being a woman rapper and her plans for the future.

Netflix just released its What India Watched in 2020 list. There was a massive growth of 370 per cent and 250 per cent in the viewership of Korean dramas and romantic films, respectively. Add to that, Indians were the biggest consumers of movies on Netflix globally.

The most popular K-dramas in India were The King: Eternal Monarch, Kingdom (S2), It’s Okay to Not Be Okay and Start-up. Meanwhile, Love Aaj Kal, Ginny Weds Sunny and Mismatched.

Find out all the top titles that were popular in 2020 in our roundup of the most-watched movies and web series on Netflix.

Many of us enjoy ordering take-out food frequently nowadays. We have good intentions of eating healthy home-cooked meals, but given the hectic pace of our lives, sometimes it just cannot be avoided.

Take-out food does not always mean eating ‘unhealthy food’. We are living in an age where several startups have come up with the vision to provide us with better choices. All of them may not be good for you but following some of our tips while choosing food can help you a great deal.

Check out our guidelines for take-out food and find out which cuisines are good for your health and your waistline too.

Are your favourite authors Yuval Noah Harari and Raghu Ram Rajan? Is your favourite fictional character ‘Jerry’ from the Tom & Jerry franchise? Do you love to holiday by the ocean? If yes, meet Niyati Chander, Co-founder and COO of SmartDEN, a company that provides Smart Home Solutions, who feels the same way.

Niyati is a post-graduate from University for Technology, Sydney, with over five years of experience in formulating strategic alliances and business strategy. She launched SmartDEN during the pandemic and has built a significant team within three months of its birth. She is also an avid reader.

As for her motto, “Focus on what you do the best. Success will follow”, is the best way to reach your highest goals.

Don’t miss Niyati’s responses to our Proust questionnaire where she talks about her greatest loves, regrets, treasures, journeys, and more.