Best of Weekender: From a candid chat with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor to a salute to our incredible teachers on Teacher’s Day

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor needs no introduction as he is one of the most celebrated faces of Indian cuisine. For over 17 years, he has run a successful TV channel called FoodFood, and hosted Khana Khazana, a cookery show.

He is living his dream of making Indian cuisine the best in the world, and empowering women and aspiring chefs out there through the power of cooking to become more self-sufficient.

Don’t miss our interaction with celebrity Chef Sanjeev Kapoor where he talks about immunity boosting diets, simple cooking, and his favourite foods.

Most people look back fondly on their teachers as the patient instructors who taught them the 3Rs — reading, writing, and arithmetic. But new studies done by various universities show that a teacher is the one individual outside of the home who can dramatically improve the wellbeing of children long after they become adults.

As another Teacher’s Day rolls around amid the pandemic, and with students attending online classes and viewing their teachers only via electronic screens, how will the dynamics of their relationship change?

Read our interviews with entrepreneurs and celebrities to find out their views about teachers and online classes, and the best advice they have received from their instructors over the years.

Photography in India has undergone an amazing metamorphosis in the last few years. Until a few years ago, wedding photography was the only viable career option in India. However, with the significant growth of the media and print industry, lifestyle photography is becoming one of the most lucrative professions.

Lifestyle photography is a career choice worth exploring. With an ever-growing social media market, photography has branched out into several streams, each producing numerous jobs.

Find out why lifestyle photography is in great demand today, and why it is a good career choice for shutterbugs who love their high-tech cameras.

If you love Indie cinema more than commercial blockbusters, get ready to enjoy them on an exclusive platform that is created for independent filmmakers. Cinemapreneur, the platform for Indie films, will bring new cinemas that are fiercely independent and uncompromisingly uncommon to your homes.

India has made its mark in world cinema with the work of talented filmmakers like Chaitanya Tamhane, whose film recently got into the list of competing films for the Venice International Film Festival.

However, independent films in the country remain limited to festivals as avenues for a proper release and monetisation are localised and few. It was due to these reasons that Cinemapreneur was launched as an online pay-per-view platform exclusively for Indian independent films.

Read all about this new OTT platform in our interaction with the co-founders Gaurav Raturi and Rupinder Kaur, and find out how they curate the movies, and all about their new project.

When Rachna Bisht Rawat’s husband Col Manoj Rawat sprung a 50th birthday surprise on her and took her to Khanabadosh, it turned to out to be a holiday to remember.

Khanabadosh is a bed-and-breakfast that was launched by Geetika when she and her husband, Arun realised how much they loved meeting new people and having them over.

Hosting came naturally to her, and she decided to open her own house to guests. Initially, she was a little apprehensive about how she would take this intrusion upon her privacy, so she tried it for a year in Bhutan. Soon, she realised that she loved connecting with absolute strangers.

And that was how Khanabadosh evolved and made its second stop at Mashobra in a big stone house that she fell in love with and leased from a local for three years.

Don’t miss Rachna’s essay on her memorable trip to Khanabadosh, situated in magnificent Mashobra.

Are your favourite authors Dan Brown, Haruki Murakami, Khaled Hosseini, and Paulo Coelho? Is Napoleon Bonaparte, the most important historical figure that you identify with? Are Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Barack Obama your heroes in real life?

If so, meet Kamal Narayan Omer, CEO, IHW (Integrated Health and Wellbeing) Council, who feels the same way. Kamal started his career as a journalist, and later decided to become an entrepreneur and co-founded Teamwork Communications Solutions Pvt Ltd. In 2014, he founded the IHW Council.

As for his motto, “Live More, Do More, Give More,” he believes is the best way to get ahead in life and make a difference to the world around you.

Don’t miss Kamal’s responses to our Proust questionnaire, where he talks about his greatest loves, regrets, journeys, treasures, and much more.