~ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ~
Eating Out in Delhi
From the Goya Journal’s City Guide series. ♦ [Lucky Peach, our favourite food magazine, is putting out its last issue this month. Although the magazine had a relatively short run of six years, in that short period, it changed food media forever. It showed us that food writing need not necessarily fall under two polar …
How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position
Tabish Khair spins a tale out of the failed 2010 attack on a Danish cartoonist ♦ In his third novel, Tabish Khair uses a botched murder attempt that brought media attention to Aarhus, the Danish town where he lives, to spin a fictional, behind-the-scenes account of the event. The attempt – a failed attack in …
How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position Read More »
Choose your own Delhi adventure
Time Out Delhi’s 5th anniversary issue ♦ “For over five years, Time Out Delhi has brought you the best of what’s happening in town each fortnight, as well as enabled armchair exploration of city culture and cuisine. We hope our special cover story spurs you to action – starting with your fingers, which will have …
Smoke House Room
Tripping the bite fantastic ♦ Being high isn’t usually associated with great gastronomic discretion. Smoking up is more likely to leave you seeing the world in a grain of fried rice than it is to get you drooling over haute cuisine. Then again, “usual” is nowhere close to what Smoke House Room is aiming for. …
Alex Moser and the Art of Constant Arrival
After drinking vodka in Vladivostok and avoiding horsemeat in Bishkek, the German chef is scouring India for ingredients. ♦ Chef Alex Moser arrived in India on a Saturday last year, to begin cooking up a food plan for Andaz, the new hotel by Hyatt in Delhi’s Aerocity. “On Sunday,” Moser recalls, “my boss took me …
Cracks in the pavement
Setting out to rediscover Calcutta, Amit Chaudhuri rejuvenates the genre of city writing ♦ Cities have been the incubators of literature since at least the time of Plato in Athens, or of Kabir in Kashi. In turn, they have also played muse, inspiring an entire metropolis of fiction and non-fiction that attempts to describe them. …
Scent of a season
Farewell to winter ♦ Winter ends as it began, its first and last trace a lingering scent, like the whiff of tobacco on a smoker’s shawl. All season, the city has mostly been a smudged landscape in indeterminate shades of grey, lifted from a palette of fog, smog, smoke, haze and mist. Hindi might have …
From Baghdad to Your Backyard
Iraqi emigrée Roaa Sardar delivers kunafa, shawarma and more around Delhi. ♦ The Back(lava) Story The first few times we call Roaa Sardar to ask her about her Arabic food delivery service, we can hear her baby daughter shrieking on the other end. “I’ll call you back!” Roaa says, sounding hassled. “Indian children are too, too, naughty,” the …
Upside Down
Georg Baselitz: Printed Works 1965-1992 ♦ Probably one of the most important artists living today, Georg Baselitz still evokes some criticism among his contemporaries. He is best-known for his inverted subjects: figures, animals, landscapes turned upside down. While this may seem a simple contrivance, a retrospective exhibition of Baselitz’s printed works – Georg Baselitz: Printed Works …
Nox
Basic mixed drinks and loud karaoke at this casual HKV bar ♦ Nox, a long, sitting-room style bar thrust up the backside of Hauz Khas Village, is a likeable enough place, even if it does fall victim to the all-encompassing tendencies of most of the city’s drinking holes. This one literally aspires to a drinking hole …
The collector
Meet Tarun Thakral – a different sort of transport mogul ♦ When the COO of Le Meridien hotel first showed a tendency towards hoarding, it seemed an innocent enough personality quirk. Tarun Thakral was studying hospitality in France in the early ’90s when he noticed that the people around him seemed more interested in their …
View with a Room
A watercolour of a friend's room in what was once a convent on the Upper West Side, Manhattan.
Eight Women: Shubhangi Yuvraj Mandare
As an officer in the Mumbai Fire Brigade, when Shubhangi Yuvraj Mandare is on the scene of disaster, she’s the woman in charge. ♦ Shubhangi Yuvraj Mandare can’t remember the details of her first call, but she does remember a small incident, one or two days after she joined the Mumbai Fire Brigade in 2012. …
Crumble in the Bronx
Threats to New York City’s Affordable Housing ♦ Note: This reported, unpublished story was written as part of a master’s program at the Columbia School of Journalism. With her peppery grey hair cut efficiently short, but dyed a youthful honey blonde, Martha Castro is a modern matriarch. At sixty-six, this mother of five children and grandmother …
Delhi-spotting
Looking for home at the National Museum’s Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps exhibition.
Up In The Air: The CP Rooftop Problem
In-fighting, bureaucracy and what it all means for spring gin-drinking. ♦ It’s that time of the year when rum gives way to gin, and Delhi’s barflies want nothing more than to sip beer on a terrace. But the city’s prime outdoor drinking scene has taken a big hit this golden month, with two rooftops collapsing within ten days of …
Mission accomplished
An American architect in Delhi ♦ Some of Delhi’s most beautiful buildings sit on foreign soil. In Chanakyapuri, the American Embassy’s Chancery and Ambassador’s residence are two of independent India’s oldest diplomatic buildings – and arguably the most successful at blending modern minimalism with motifs from Mughal and British architecture. Architect Edward Durell Stone, who …
Fragments of beauty
Attiya Shaukat at Anant Art Gallery ♦ Lahore-based Attiya Shaukat’s miniature-style paintings on view at Anant Art Gallery are sensitive and intelligent works. Like several Pakistani artists nowadays, Shaukat draws on contemporary themes and symbols in her miniature paintings. Her work stands out, though, for its experimental montaging of symbols and compositions and for her inspired …
A dog’s life
Capital canines unleashed ♦ Dogs are both Delhi’s most maligned and best-loved creatures. From strays who know our city’s tough streets better than most people, to pet pooches who hold their owners hostage to their every need, take a walk with some capital canines in this Time Out Delhi cover package from April 2012. Read …
Breaking Barriers, Challenging Stereotypes
Eight women, eight professions for International Women’s Day ♦ As India’s economy grows, reports have indicated alarming drops in the percentage of women in its workforce. From a high of 31 percent more than a decade ago, the number has dropped to about 23 percent in recent years. The reasons for this are myriad and …
Building blokes
The Modern Architecture of New Delhi ♦ Rahul Khanna, owner of Below8 bar, and Manav Parhawk, a fashion photographer, teamed up to explore Delhi’s modern architecture. Their book, The Modern Architecture of New Delhi: 1928-2007, reads like a series of monographs. Sonal Shah spoke to Khanna and Parhawk about how they came to see their …
Stirring the pot
Delhi’s culinary melange ♦ Part of a Time Out Delhi food cover story, this is a short history of Delhi food, plus a guide to eating in the old city (published in 2008). Read the story as a PDF, find the text reproduced below, or download the PDF here. (Pairs well with this story on old Delhi …
Like a surgeon
In Abraham Verghese’s debut novel, fate is stitched together with sutures ♦ Abraham Verghese is a man of science and fact. His experiences as a doctor in small-town Tennessee in the mid-1980s during the early years of the AIDS epidemic led to his first book, the well-received My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story. After a flurry …
Stepping up
Artists engage with a land rights movement that touches down in Delhi this October ♦ What do a Delhi painter, an English photographer, a Swiss multimedia artist, and one lakh rural Indians fighting for land rights have in common? More than you’d expect, according to Walking: A Dialogue between Art and Social Movement. The exhibition coincides …
Cutting edge
Performance art: History, highlights and what to see at the India Art Fair 2012 ♦ Time Out Delhi‘s timeline of performance art from India and elsewhere, published January 20, 2012. Read the full story below, download it as a pretty PDF here, or find it in somewhat mangled form online at Time Out Delhi.
My Bar
All the essentials in Paharganj ♦ Strip a bar down to its basics, and all you really need is an accommodating room, some seating, an efficient refill team, some liquor and – ideally – a liquor license. My Bar in Paharganj has the essentials, and quite a few bonuses. Opposite the Metropolis hotel, this air-conditioned …
Flights of fantasy
An interview with Alia Syed ♦ Experimental filmmaker Alia Syed was born in Swansea, Wales, to Indian and Welsh parents. Over the last thirteen years, Syed’s films have discussed diaspora, subjectivity and narrative, creating mesmerizing visual experiences. From the 24th of December to the 31st of March, Delhi’s Talwar Gallery held Syed’s first solo show …
Eight Women: Shanti Devi
Shanti Devi works alongside her husband in the no woman’s land of Delhi’s largest truck stop. ♦ It’s unclear exactly how the Internet originally discovered Shanti Devi, a 50-something who works alongside her husband, repairing truck tires in the Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, a sprawling truck yard stuffed with mechanics, about 16 km away from …
Looking back at you
While Gieve Patel’s Clouds and Skulls come across as simple studio sketches, his Wells offer a meditative exploration of the natural world ♦ Over the last four decades, Gieve Patel’s work has turned inward. Wells Clouds Skulls, his solo at Bose Pacia Gallery, Brooklyn, from the 5th of May to the 25th of June, displayed this …
The Angst of Being a Modern Indian
The Cosmopolitans ♦Anjum HasanPenguin India, 309 pages, Rs 499. “Being a modern Indian is hard work,” a former king tells Qayanaat, the protagonist of Anjum Hasan’s The Cosmopolitans. If this is true for the King, the dispossessed monarch of fictional, small-town Simhal, it’s certainly so for Qayanaat, a 53-year-old single woman who lives in Bengaluru, subsisting …
The Walls of Delhi
Uday Prakash’s stories bring downtrodden characters to life ♦ “I bet you’re thinking that I’m taking advantage of the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction, to spin you some hundredand- twenty-five-year-old story, dressed up as a tale of today,” writes Uday Prakash, in one of …
Music of the spheres
Ranjani Shettar’s fluttering installations at a New York gallery reveal their secrets ♦ Ranjani Shettar’s skeletal sculptures hung festooned from the ceiling of Talwar Art Gallery from October the 2nd to January the 30th 2010. The filigreed shapes – loops, curlicues and disk-like embellishments – seemed to be suspended in mid-air. From their spare beauty, it …
Haunted Delhi
The bhoot is out there ♦ From the haunting of 10 Janpath to Gef the singing mongoose – not to mention djinns, headless sepoys and Certified Leading Paranormal Investigators – this Time Out Delhi cover package from October 28, 2011 chronicles the capital’s ghost stories. Read the full story below, download it as a pretty …
bpb Review: The Sleepy Owl’s Cold-Brew Coffee Shop, Shahpur Jat
A hip cold-brew delivery service opens a café at their office. ♦ Something brews in Shahpur Jat with no boil nor bubble. The charm firm and good on tap at Sleepy Owl is cold-brew coffee, in which grounds are immersed in room-temperature water—Sleepy Owl infuses their Chikmagalur for 22 hours—slowly imparting their flavour without the …
bpb Review: The Sleepy Owl’s Cold-Brew Coffee Shop, Shahpur Jat Read More »
The Lady and the Landmark
Ethel Bates wants a cooking school in the historic Corn Exchange. The city just tore part of it down ♦ Until she starts talking, Ethel Bates looks like anyone’s grandmother with her maroon windbreaker, a dun scarf wrapped turbanlike around her head. Short, forceful and sharp as a whip, this energetic 77-year-old community activist has …
RT Book Reviews
Magazine review ♦ Name: RT Book Reviews Circulation: 70,000 Date of Birth: 1981 Frequency: Monthly Price: $4.99 In a little brick building in Brooklyn, the offices of RT Book Reviews (formerly known as Romantic Times) are divided between two suites. In one, paperbacks and curios line shelves set in converted fireplaces and against a wall painted with pink …
bpb Review: Baris, Greater Kailash II
Atta Turks! A chef from Istanbul and a Sanjay Leela Bhansali set come together in South Delhi. ♦ Turkish and Hindi have many words in common: for example, duniya, divana, badam, and bulbul. The name of Masjid Moth’s newest kid on the block, pronounced baarish, sounds familiar, however means, not “rain,” but “peaceful.” Bariş’ “Inspired …
To the Manohar born
Help yourself to a slice of Delhi food history ♦ On a walk through Khan Market’s intestinal middle lane the other day, we came upon a basket of bread, next to the imported strawberries and grapes. The smallish, dark square loaves nestled in the large basket looked impossibly old-fashioned compared to the fluffy white or …
The treehouse for two
Paramjit and Arpita Singh line their sunny nest with warm reds and leafy greens ♦ This article is part of a series on artists’ homes. When artists Arpita and Paramjit Singh first visited their house in Nizamuddin East, it was in 1975, for chai with barsati resident Bhaskar Kulkarni (a “hippie-type”, as Paramjit put it) who …
Child Speak/Woman Song
Vasundhara Tewari Broota at Shridharani Gallery ♦ Much like her paintings, the title of Vasundhara Tewari Broota’s current show at Triveni suggests more than it says outright. However, as is evidenced from the catalogue essay by Gayatri Sinha, Broota has a lot to say – this time about childhood, and the woman as a mother and …
It’s Not Easy Being Green…
… for a Budding Cannabis Entrepreneur in India. ♦ A couple of years ago, Omair Alam was at a party full of people “in the bhabis and bhaiyas category”, when people started asking around for a joint. “That’s the time I realised it’s not just me—everybody’s OK with it,” Alam told me when we met …
bpb Review: Bengal Delight, Kalkaji
An Odiya cook brings authentic Bengali food to Delhi, via Mumbai. ♦ We’ve had our share of fish fry, mochar chop, and radha-ballabhi at CR Park’s abundant eateries, but the most exacting Bengali epicureans we know usually turn their noses up at the area’s “Punjabified” restaurants, claiming the food is “too spicy,” “too oily,” and …
Walk the chawk with Sam Miller
Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity ♦ Journalist Sam Miller’s new book Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity describes the British expat’s walks around town, which followed the same spiral route he’d laid out for himself. We phoned him as he was commuting, by foot, from his office in Hauz Khas to his home in Panchsheel. “I’ll …
News flashback
Anuja Chauhan’s third romantic comedy is set in Delhi of the 1980s ♦ A tall, dark and distinctively handsome journalist with a conscience meets a beautiful, intelligent “DeshDarpan” newsreader with four sisters, a house on Hailey Road and a distinctive mole on her chin. Delhi in the 1980s and India’ widening mediascape are the backdrop of …
Eight Women: Devki Joshi
With over three decades in the Delhi Police under her belt, Devki Joshi now manages an all-woman fleet of emergency response vans. ♦ Parenting experience can be a valuable asset in police work, and as the mother of three children, with 32 years in the Delhi Police, Sub-Inspector Devki Joshi has ample expertise in both. …
Fathers, Sons and Motherlands
Book Review: South Haven ♦By Hirsh SawhneyHarperCollins Publishers India, 2016 When the Babri Masjid was demolished, I was about the same age as Siddharth Arora, the preteen protagonist of Hirsh Sawhney’s debut novel. Like him, I was a first generation Indian American, growing up in an east coast suburb; like him, the news reached me …
Vega
Pure vegetarian, old-school Indian ♦ The owners of one of Delhi’s oldest hotels (Alka in Connaught Place, established in 1968) decided not too long ago to try their luck at the cursed spot at Tavern on the Greens in Lado Sarai, which has thus far summarily rejected Climax, F Bar and Bar Sávanh. They opened a …
Difficult Pleasures
Anjum Hasan’s short stories score on pacing and plot ♦ Tortured as some of them are, it’s a pleasure to slip inside the minds of the characters of Anjum Hasan’s fourth book. In this collection of 13 perfect short stories, Hasan picks moments out of ordinary lives set in Bangalore, Shillong (where she grew up) …
Eight Women: Pelva Naik
Young classical vocalist Pelva Naik lets nothing come between her and her passion for dhrupad, a genre that has largely been performed by men. ♦ For Pelva Naik, a 31-year-old classical vocalist, art is something that transcends differences. In interviews, one of her favourite responses to the question of being a rare female dhrupad performer …
bpbReview: The Hong Kong Club, Andaz Delhi, Aerocity
Sampan in the way she moves. ♦ This writer is a fan of Andaz hotel’s stereotype-busting AnnaMaya restaurant, with its locally sourced vegetables and wall of micro-greens juxtaposed against an over-the-top dessert display. When AnnaMaya opened last year, it proved a welcome departure from the stuffy banality of most upscale hotel coffee shops with their …
bpbReview: The Hong Kong Club, Andaz Delhi, Aerocity Read More »
