My whisky notes
A friend asked me, ‘You’ve been writing a lot of posts on whisky these days. Do you have any reason for this?’ ‘Reason?’ I said, ‘You want a reason? By the time we reach the end of this month, I’d have given you at least thirty reasons to appreciate this alcoholic beverage. But in this...
Tipsy twitter
‘Life is lived in 140 characters,’ said Specky that fine evening as she took a sip of Black Dog TGR. I agreed with this notion and replied, ‘True. We are so like tweets, full of spelling errors, without the grammar of sanity, and in a hurry to say everything fast.’ Specky laughed. Sometimes I wonder...
Ideas that work
It is often said that where MBAs are known to strut around with strategies that fail, an ordinary man on the street is replete with ideas that are workable… and often work. So it is with the mighty writers and food specialists telling us of what can be subtle and what is too raucous for...
WHIZky – A crossword for whisky lovers
Yes, WHIZky is indeed a crossword for whisky lovers. Though you may need to take a print of the grid that I have added to this post as an image. The clues are given just below the grid image… and the answers? Well, the answers too are right on this page and you just need to...
Cola de Gallo started it all
There are words… then there are words with a story… and finally there are words with a lot of stories trailing them. Cocktail is one word that has no limit to the stories that can be connected to it. Who wouldn’t want to be a part the history of a word that most of humanity...
Usquebaugh
Usquebaugh! I first read this word emblazoned on a tee-shirt and I thought, ‘Here is another one who is wearing something he probably doesn’t know the meaning of!’ I didn’t just go on thinking, I went up to this man and asked, ‘Sir, this seems to be an interesting word. What does it mean?’ He...
Blending truth, senses, and poetry
An approximately 130 years old brand, calling itself the perfect scotch is what Black Dog is all about. Yes, someone did once describe this scotch as sunlight held together by water… though I’m sure Sir Walter Millard, a Scot, might not have agreed to the technicalities of the phrase but would surely have loved the...
It’s my life, my taste
Taste. It exists in words, deeds, and non-verbal interactions. You have the right to remain tasteless, of course. Like so many of us. I’m sure you’ve noticed tasteless gestures, heard tasteless remarks, and have been tortured by tasteless relationships… they’re there everywhere. Therefore, taste has many forms. We’re literally surrounded by them and the way...
A case of exploding sizes
As the sun went down, darkness descended. It was a cloudy night with the moon peeping out once every few seconds. We were sitting on the balcony of a rest-house in a small mountain hamlet. Down below we could hear a river making its way through jutting rocks and another dark peak rose menacingly just...
The invasion of slogans
We all live our lives surrounded by slogans, captions, and taglines, don’t we? Switch on the telly and they’re there. Open your newspaper and they hound you. Go to the market place and you read them everywhere. Try and relax on the social media and all you notice are slogans. They’re there, for sure. Life...
Travel into time
We were in Connaught Place in the heart of the Capital and had met after years. Talking to him was more like going back in time… the school tales, the after-school jaunts into long conversations that ended up in dreamy resolves, and all the funny and not-so-funny times… they were all coming out one by...
More Black Dog stories
Well, Specky and I keep playing games where intrigue becomes an integral part of the entire process. We had started a game where we began searching for the various avataars for the term ‘Black Dog’ and were able to find quite a lot in the previous post. These games are as vital as the characteristics...
