More meat in Brunch now

No one does weeklies quite like the good fellows at HT Media. I have been a big fan of HT's weekend supplement Brunch and Mint's weekend supplement Lounge for a long time.

In fact, I had begun subscribing to HT on moving to Mumbai only because of Brunch, but then discontinued it because it felt wasteful as I wasn't reading the main paper at all. The column in Brunch I used to look forward to reading the most was Rude Food or its derivative columns by Vir Sanghvi. I get to read that now anyway through the link to the online version he shares every Sunday on his twitter account.

I still do read Mint, which in itself is a brilliant newspaper, and so Lounge finds itself placed on my doormat every Saturday morning, all smiling for me when I open the front-door almost the first thing after waking up.

I was in Kanpur this weekend to conduct a sci-fi quiz at IIT as part of their tech-fest TechKriti, and had resigned myself to the fact that someone would have removed my newspaper by the time I got back Sunday afternoon. And was immensely relieved on reaching my flat and finding that it was still there. There are few things more relaxing than retiring on your couch on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, after a few very hectic days, after a hot shower, with, yes, you guessed it, a mug of chilled Kingfisher beside you.

There was a short trip to Hypercity to do the grocery shopping between that return from Kanpur and retiring on the couch bits. One of the reasons I look forward to going to Hypercity every weekend is the shelves of magazines that greet you on entry into the store. I normally buy the latest edition of Tehelka, which I need to write about some time soon, and a couple of other magazines if anything else looks interesting. It usually doesn't.

But this time around a familiar name stood out from all the other India Todays and Newsweeks and Peoples on the shelves. I was surprised to see a thick edition of Brunch being sold there. Turns out the Brunch team has decided to come out with a glossier and meatier version of Brunch as a quarterly.

The inaugural edition has Karan Johar and Katrina Kaif on the cover, in case you plan to go out looking for it.

I haven't got beyond the first few pages, but the remaining content does look promising. I was slightly disappointed with the printing in the part that I have gone through - there are several words where the letters have been printed one on the other. But, hopefully just teething issues.