La paix intérieure - Auroville

While I set out on a week of travel in the form of road trips to the South of the country, one of my main attractions was Auroville. I had heard a lot about it, and I never made it there on my previous visit to Pondicherry. This time, there was no excuse, and we made sure we visited.
Auroville is indescribable. It strives to be a community and a city by itself. With the kind of teaching it follows, it welcomes people from all walks of life from all over the world. Of course the main 'attraction' as tourists would call it would be the Matrimandir. Which is this beautiful gold orb-like structure that's almost in the center of this civilization. A meditation center for it's people. To help you find la paix intérieure or inner peace and live in harmony.

Tata Zest - The Review

Photo credit - Carblogindia.com

Over a lovely weekend in Goa, we met with bloggers from different cities to test drive the much hyped Tata Zest. To know more about my Zest experience - click here. This car has been around in the news for a while now. With terms like revolutionary and world class, I'm sure many of you are eager to know more.

After a 2 hour test drive with the manual as well as the automatic (both of which I didn't drive, since I don't actually drive - but I took a lot of notes from my team who did!) we came to the conclusion that we preferred the automatic as it was a much easier drive. I experienced the steering and suspension. While the steering is lighter than any other Tata vehicle, the suspension is lovely and we hardly felt any of those bumps on the road.

While I cannot get into the main technical aspects like the Revotron 1.2T or the F-Tronic and the AMT (because I really don't know these things!) I can tell you what piqued my interest. The ConnectNext feature. This amazing little thing has advanced Bluetooth to which you can connect multiple devices at a time and a system that has text message notifications and readouts. A touch screen version on some of the higher end models as well as advanced voice command recognition and finally 8 speakers installed for the best surround sound! 

Another lovely feature which made it sound like this was a video game was the different multi-drive modes. While driving, you can switch to three different modes - Eco, Speed and City.

The eco mode is meant for highway cruising and has maximum fuel efficiency, while sport of course added that burst of power, whenever needed, and finally city which is the perfect balance of power and mileage for urban driving.
Basically the Tata Zest is a compact sedan which was designed keeping in mind navigating and dodging India traffic, as well as, accommodating large Indian families.
Looking at the faces of those who did get to drive the Zest, I'll have to admit, I was a bit jealous!   

A weekend in Goa

Clockwise : Neha Kapoor, myself and Ila Johari

When BlogAdda told me to block my dates for a trip to Goa for an 'eventful' experience, I was really excited. This was before I learned this was to experience and test drive the Tata Zest. I for one, do not have a driver's license and so I thought I did not fit in here. Even my phone auto-corrects 'cars' to 'cats' at most times! However they encouraged me to still come and have a 'Zestful experience'. So along with a few blogger friends, we landed in Goa on Saturday afternoon and headed to the Zuri White Sands resort. We were rushed off to a late lunch and then welcomed by the BlogAdda team and met other bloggers from Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. 

Back in Black

I think there is/was a time in everyone's life, where they went black. Dressing in black was either a way of life to some or to express themselves better or just to look slimmer- because there was a time when magazines told us that we needed to wear black to look thin.

I can't remember how I fell into this category, but I did. It was influenced heavily by the music I listened to. A few people still remind me of that goth phase (even though I hate the labelling), but my black sartorial choices weren't out of whim or fancy. I just LOVED black. I even wore black nail paint way before it was made popular by the likes of the Hiltons and the Lohans. And this is what I got to hear from friends -  "black and black doesn't match or go together" "you nails look like tar" "who died?" and you can pretty much picture the rest.

Let's swap clothes!

image via Pinterest

For the past year, I've been trying to have a 'clothing swap' meet with my blogger friends. All this planning only happened on email, on whatsapp and in between events but somehow we never got around to actually doing it. Call it laziness, or work overload or even last year's monsoons - things just never worked out for us. However, I'm happy to announce that Swapzaar, is a newly launched venture, where you can swap anything from clothes to collectibles with other users.

Femella.in

If you are a regular online shopper (like my mom and I) you may have definitely some across  the brand 'Femella' on various shopping portals. With their very pocket friendly prices, Femella seems to be doing pretty well and has launched their own website, where you can shop all their pieces. I'm currently in love with their dresses and tunics, and if I was a college girl who needed a wardrobe upgrade, this is where I would shop!