Vijee Venkatraman

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Guru the Caterer’s Following Has a Taste For Indian Food

Four years ago, Guru the Caterer set up shop on Broadway here. The sign read "divine Indian food for brilliant minds" and listed the contact information, but the shutters remained closed most of the time. Meanwhile, a minivan with the same intriguing tagline was zipping...

What is the funda?

The sylvan campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras sits a good degree Celsius cooler than the rest of the city. Here, deer prance alongside runners in the tracks; bonnet macaques hang around the residential hostels. At dusk, rose-ringed parakeets flock over tree-canopies. The...

The charms of Indian beach food

Urban beaches the world over have their own peculiar charms. There is foot volleyball in Brazil's Copacabana and surfing at Sydney's Bondi beach, but beaches in Indian cities have one big draw – food. In my hometown of Chennai, fishermen set off in rudimentary catamarans...

Dosa Delights

Last year, rice crepes from South India – yes, the humble dosa – got the nod from the foodies of New York when Thiru Kumar, the "Dosa Man," was voted the purveyor of the best street food in their city. Soon after the Vendy Awards,...

Low Tech Inventions With High Impact

Amy Smith is not an easy person to track down. Even during the school year, this inventor and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hops over to remote African towns and Latin American villages. When she is on campus, the best bet for finding Ms. Smith...

Photowalks for The City

Not too long ago, our city did treat its own history like a classified document -- privy but to a few. In a city where taking photos of public buildings is dissuaded, a group of camera-toting locals have quietly turned walking into an act of...