~ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ~
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 …
bpb Review: Aku’s, Defence Colony
This new “brrgrr co.” urgently needs vowels, but is sweet on the tongue all the same. ♦ Passing through the newly-shorn Def Col this week, we notice a little shop more than a bit reminiscent of New York City’s gourmet fast-food chain, Shake Shack, outside which we’ve spent many an anticipatory hour in the queue for …
Windows in the city walls
Two Old Delhi buildings are waiting to be reborn as city museums ♦ This article is part of a longer story on Delhi’s museums. In a miniature watercolour from 1820, Sir David Ochterlony lords over a nautch, dressed in Mughal garb with hookah in hand. That portrait shows Delhi’s first British Resident in his home – …
bpb Review: Chez Jerome, GK1
Escoffier & escargot in an unlikely market. ♦ Henri Cartier-Bresson took an iconic image of a Parisian boy with a bottle of wine tucked under each arm, and a saucy grin on his face. The same joie de vivre runs through Jerome Cousin’s latest Delhi establishment (after Petit Bar, Rara Avis, and the Q Cafe). …
View with a Room
A watercolour of a friend's room in what was once a convent on the Upper West Side, Manhattan.
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 …
Fodor’s Essential India
Guidebook ♦ I wrote several chapters for Fodor’s Essential India guidebook and helped update others for the second edition. This included articles on Indian history and culture, food, archaeological monuments and Delhi. You can preview some of the content here. Originally published in 2011, updated in 2012.
Where Sinbad Sailed His Dhow
The Arabian peninsula’s maritime history comes alive in Oman. ♦ In 1979, British adventurer and maritime explorer Tim Severin wandered the west coast of India, the country of his birth, looking for rope. Severin had already voyaged across the Atlantic in an open boat, approximating the journey of a sixth-century monk. Now he wanted to …
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 …
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. …
The Householder
Amitabha Bagchi’s second novel focuses on corruption in Delhi ♦ Naresh Kumar, the householder of the title, is having a little trouble holding his home together. As PA to a powerful Delhi bureaucrat, Kumar has a routine but tenuously balanced life that’s built, like a pack of cards, on years of under-the-table transactions, shady deals …
Hats and Doctors
Daisy Rockwell’s translation of the late Upendranath Ashk ♦ Daisy Rockwell’s translation of Hindi-Urdu writer Upendranath Ashk’s short stories is more of a teaser than a complete introduction to the Jalandhar-born author. Rockwell, who also edited the collection, had the fortune to meet Ashk a year before he died in Allahabad in 1996. She admiringly characterises …
Arcade Games
Time travelling on Melbourne’s historic retail trail. ♦ Melbourne feels less like a small city than a miniaturized big one. Roughly the size of Delhi’s old walled city, its central business district is compact enough to survey on foot in a few hours. Its regular grid, buildings in diverse architectural styles, and vibrant summer streets …
bpb Review: WD House, Greater Kailash II
A well-known Chandigarh restaurant unsheathes weapons of mass degustation. ♦ At a time when Indian modernism is threatened from every angle—from the demolition of the Hall of Nations at Pragati Maidan, to the final blow to Nehruvian geopolitics with Modi’s mushy embrace of Israel—WD House is an unlikely but welcome throwback to the robust, idealistic …
Yoko Ono
The avante-garde artist performs and exhibits in Delhi ♦ This article is part of a cover story on performance art in India. Yoko Ono’s artistic journey has been a strange one. When she became a household name, her avant-garde art became just one more reason for the mainstream media to vilify her. But as Dilliwalas …
Portrait of a lady
The last century of Mughal rule comes to life in The Mirror of Beauty, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s compelling picture of Delhi and its wider world ♦ View as PDF Beloved of poets and coveted by kings, conquered and constructed again and again, Delhi in its present avatar is a tough city to love. Yet many …
The Holi Pre-Party at a Bhang Theka in Noida
Two VICE editors visit a bhang shop before Holi. ♦ With Vivek Gopal Much like a hugely gentler version of the Purge, Holi is the one day of the year in which cannabis becomes socially acceptable in India. A popular staple of the festival is bhang, a ground and cooked mash of cannabis leaves and flowers. …
River crossing
Five Yamuna walks ♦ Cities usually consider a river to be a blessing, but us Dilliwalas tend to turn our backs to ours. We hold our breath while driving across the Yamuna, thoughtlessly discharge our waste into it, pour concrete over its banks and, during the occasional festival, dump statues, diyas and other religious paraphernalia …
Graveyard Shift
Exploring Delhi’s burial grounds. ♦ Delhi War Cemetery Headstones in neat lines mark the graves of mostly Christian soldiers (though we did find a Jewish doctor) who died during World War II, with the soldier’s number, rank and regimental seal engraved on it. A tall, colonnaded entrance plaza has, on one side, a book with …
Buried treasure
Air Force Museum, Bhai Mati Das Sati Das, Central Bureau of Investigation, Crafts Museum, Gallery of Musical Instruments, Gargoti Mineral Museum, Heritage Transport Museum, History, Indira Gandhi Memorial, Museums, National Agricultural Science Museum, Parliament Museum, Shankar's International Doll's Museum, Sulabh Toilet Museum, Tenzing Norgay, Town Hall, Tribal Museum, Walled City MuseumBuried treasure
Digging out the weird and wonderful in Delhi’s museums ♦ For this Time Out Delhi cover story from September 2011, the team visited almost every museum in Delhi and found everything from accountancy methods to dinosaur eggs. Read the full story below, or download it as a PDF here.
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 …
bpb Review: Napoli Pizza, Safdarjung Enclave
Let’s not beat about the bush. It’s amore. ♦ Every food review has its moment of truth. Sometimes, it is a prompt lightning bolt, as blatant as the bling adorning your fellow diners. At other times, it is a tardy thunderclap, arriving along with a lengthy bill that magically transforms a pretty good meal into …
The Hired Man
Aminatta Forna travels to Croatia for her fourth novel ♦ In her fourth book, Aminatta Forna ventures out of Sierra Leone and Africa, the setting for her previous titles (including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prizewinning The Memory of Love). Set in a small town at the foot of the mountains in Croatia, The Hired Man, like Forna’s …
bpb Review: Piso 16, Nehru Place
Literally on the level. ♦ Many, many New Delhi bars have tried to bring New York home. (Bombay is – of course – worse: an ‘It Happened In New York’ was rampant in Bandra until very recently.) But Piso 16’s vibe is, no jokes, somewhere between a posh Midtown hotel bar and a Harlem cocktail club. …
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 …
Printer’s proof
A public airing of a private collection of prints could spike interest in an underappreciated medium ♦ When people in the Indian art frat hear the details of collector Waswo X Waswo’s first encounter with printmaking, they sometimes “express a little shock.” The son of a grocer, American-born Waswo once had a job in an …
Consuming passion
Anjum Anand ♦ Anjum Anand served a station full of beefy British fire-fighters naan and lamb curry – cooked by one of their fellows – in the last season of her debut cooking show Indian Food Made Easy. However, the meal was not as heavy as the usual lunch the fire-fighters consume. “Light” Indian food …
Spiritus mandi
To market, to market ♦ The Defence Colony sabzi and phalwalas are a sonorous lot, with strength in numbers and vocal prowess. Mornings sound like an episode of “So you think you can hawk?” or maybe the opening song of a kitschy musical: a dim-lit stage, the low murmer of doves, the plaintive refrain of …
A room on the roof
Notes from the last barsati ♦ Delhi, early morning. The sun burns through the haze, like a lighthouse lamp growing brighter as the bustling port of waking life approaches, pulling the tides of thought out of the ocean of dreams and towards the shores of reality, where I find myself cast up, suddenly solid, embodied. …
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 …
“Plagiarism Is Such a Heavy, Loaded Word.”
Why pop-poet Rupi Kaur doesn’t worry about being unique. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. Fresh from her success at the Jaipur Literary Festival, 25-year-old Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur met with VICE India editors Sonal Shah and Vivek Gopal earlier this year. Only glancingly familiar with her oeuvre, we flipped through her two books, Milk and Honey and The Sun …
Uptown Takedown
Wrestling takes hold in Harlem ♦ In Harlem, basketball and football are the most popular sports. But at Kappa IV, a public middle school at St. Nicholas and 135th Street, wrestling is gaining traction. The afterschool classes started a month ago, when an organization called Beat the Streets teamed up with Jets of Harlem, the youth …
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 …
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 …
Time to pretend
There’s a costume for every occasion at Abhiruchi ♦ Read this article as part of Time Out Delhi’s “Haunted Delhi” cover story. Two men walk into a costume shop. They’re looking for a child-sized potato outfit. Mrs Wadhwa doesn’t bat an eyelid. She has an entire vegetable patch worth of costumes: onions, tomatoes, aubergines and …
Community, DNA Crucial in Serial Rapist Arrest
By Rachael Horowitz and Sonal Shah ♦ After an intense two-month search, police have arrested the man they believe is responsible for raping and robbing four women in Hamilton Heights during August and September. DNA from the suspect, 21-year-old Vincent Heyward, matches DNA samples from all the rapes, and a 5th attempted attack, according to officers …
Neighbourhood Guide: Khanna Market
Neighbourhood Guide: Khanna Market ♦ Each of the four big markets in the quadrangle of land bound by Lodhi Road, Nehru Stadium, Aurobindo Marg and the railway line has its own special charm, from the leafy literary appeal of Jorbagh; to the sleepy specialty stores and restaurants of Lodhi Colony Market; to Mehar Chand’s mix of haute …
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 …
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 …
Thukral & Tagra
Admen, artists, ambassadors ♦ In the ongoing search to furnish India’s contemporary art scene with international emissaries, it is appropriate that two most prolific ambassadors have a background emblematic of the country’s most shining industry: advertising and design. Anything but appropriate, however, is the impish name of the fake brand that artist/designer duo Sumir Tagra …
Song of the open road
Street music ♦ Concerts go down in history for attracting record crowds, for the debut of a groundbreaking work, or the return of a long-absent musician to the gig circuit. Rarely are they remembered for being completely ignored. Yet a performance by American violin virtuoso Joshua Bell became legendary precisely for that reason – and …
Storm in Chandigarh, A Situation in New Delhi
Nayantara Sahgal ♦ “Politicians, whatever their political colour, and whatever they piously said, got fat from office. They would never banish the contrasts, never in ten thousand years build an equal society. How could they, when they were products of the rot themselves, of caste, of vested interests and stinking old ideas? It would take the …
Another Country
Anjali Joseph processes bewilderment ♦ If Anjali Joseph’s second novel is best devoured in one sitting, it’s not because it wouldn’t hold up to slow, literary scrutiny. Rather, it’s because Another Country is the refreshing opposite of that “urgent book” that demands moral engagement. It builds character-driven emotional momentum through protagonist Leela’s peregrinations through Paris, …
Epic tale
Raavan Chhaya is iPad myth lit ♦ Indian epics cast a long shadow into popular culture, but it’s safe to say they could never have been described as “trending” before now. Every other day, a new fantasy series, comic or film inspired by the Rama-yana or the Mahabharata finds space on a the shelf or screen …
bpb Review: Shibuya Food & Bar, Greater Kailash-II
Lost in gustation. ♦ Unlike its namesake, Shibuya the restaurant is relatively quiet in its first week of operation. Just a few families and groups of friends occupy the dining room and enclosed balcony of the lower floor. The bar on the upper floor isn’t open yet, but includes a bigger open area for mingling. …
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Saanuk Oriental Bistro & Lounge
Luxe Buddhas and a killer deal ♦ In the early days of Time Out food reviewing, there were no quaint little tea rooms or reservoir-facing bistros popping up every other week. You were lucky if you got to go to a hotel once in a while; otherwise, a high percentage of the free dining experience …
Damn nation
Siddartha Deb finds life less than shiny in the new India ♦ In The Beautiful and Damned, F Scott Fitzgerald’s profligate main characters embody the two adjectives in the title. The novel – an attempt to critique the excesses of America’s jazz age – ended up as a rather self-indulgent byproduct of it instead. Fitzgerald’s narrative …
Found in translation
The man behind a flood of translations is swept up in his work ♦ Nearly 15 years had passed since Arunava Sinha translated Chowringhee at the request of the Bengali classic’s author, Sankar. Back then, in 1992, Sinha was embarking on his professional career and considered his bridge translation (an English draft for a French edition) …
bpb Review: Kampai, Aerocity
Samurai gour-meh. ♦ Leaving aside roadside chow mein, unaffordable five-star hotels, and Delhi’s immortal Aka Sakas and Ichibans, three newer categories of east Asian eateries abound in the NCR these days. The first: pan-Asian delivery joints of varying quality, from the comfort curries of Culinaire to the poké bowls of newer contenders like Orient Heritage. …
Ab Dawa Ki Jaroorat Nahin
A doctor uses medical charting software to plot trends in classic Hindi film songs. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. Anupam Kumar Singh, 35, works in the cardiology department of Hindu Rao Hospital in Delhi. Originally from Bihar, Singh told me he didn’t always plan on being a doctor. “I wanted to grow up to …
