Provisioning During a Pandemic
Gourmet ingredient delivery around India ♦ Originally published in India Today. Not too long ago, “gourmet” was synonymous with imported. Foreign products occupied the shelves of our loftier kirana dukaans, bearing unheard-of brand names and amusing MRPs. Still, with international shipping curtailed through the lockdown, India’s gourmands might have felt their absence. (But maybe not; …
Protected: Keep Calm and Do Yoga
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Protected: A Family Affair: Women and Panchayat Politics
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Protected: India’s Unbroken Chains: Labour Migration in the Time of COVID-19
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Force and Composure
Krishen Khanna remembers Satish Gujral, who passed away on March 26, 2020 ♦ Note: After Satish Gujral died, I spoke to his friend and my grandfather, Krishen Khanna for India Today. This is what he had to say. My friendship with Satish Gujral feels eternal, did I know him for fifty years, or a thousand? …
Protected: Eighteen Years of Khabar Lahariya
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Protected: Lockdown Life: Inside the Homes and Phones of a Covid-Shuttered Country
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Invisible Man
Aravind Adiga imagines Australia refracted through an immigrant’s eyes ♦ Originally published in India Today. We use the word apocalypse, and these days frequently, to describe the end of the world. But its literal meaning, from ancient Greek, is “uncovering”. No one can say for sure whether Covid-19 is our omega, but there’s no doubt …
Protected: The Hunger Pandemic: Ash-filled Stoves and Empty Stomachs in Rural Uttar Pradesh
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Protected: Tea and Azadi: What We Learned from the Women-led Citizenship Protests
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Protected: A Ringside View of Women’s Wrestling in U.P.
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Poet Verses Delhi
Akhil Katyal chronicles Delhi’s many moods in his new poetry collection ♦ Originally published in India Today. The last line of Agha Shahid Ali’s poem “Chandni Chowk, Delhi” gives Akhil Katyal’s new book its title, but the entire collection seems impelled by the poem’s opening command—“Swallow this summer street…” In these Delhi poems, Katyal imbibes …
Protected: From Benaras to Banda, Women Are Working Out
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A City in a Fog
In Deepa Anappara’s Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, dangers lurk in the long shadows of Nithari and Nirbhaya ♦ Originally published in India Today. Smog meanders through the pages of Deepa Anappara’s moving debut novel; an oppressive presence, like one of the malevolent djinns that nine-year-old Jai worries might be behind a series of …
Protest Code
Suñatā Samantā: Emptiness Equality invites you to look beyond the obvious in art to see discontent and dissent ♦ Originally published in India Today. Scribbled on the back of a landing, positioned so that you see them as you walk down the stairs when leaving Suñatā Samantā, are two scraps of text in Hindi and …
Protected: The Book of Love: Interfaith Relationships Light A Secular Path
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Protected: A Tale of Two Universities: Student Politics, Caste and Compromises
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Protected: A Dream of Flight: Innovators in Rural Aviation
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The Philosopher’s Tome
Accidental Magic, Keshava Guha’s debut novel, ponders Harry Potter fandom but is light on geeky delights. ♦ Originally published in India Today. Since Harry Potter debuted in 1997, books, films and fan material related to J.K. Rowling’s novels have proliferated faster than cursed objects in a vault at Gringotts. There are academic treatises, pop literary …
Mother of Invention
Perumal Murugan remembers Amma in his latest book. ♦ Originally published in India Today. I’d been waiting a couple of days to hear back from the writer Perumal Murugan, via an editor who promised to translate my questions into Tamil and his replies to English. That this kind of exchange is possible at all is …
The Great Trotter Resurrection
Irwin Allan Sealy’s Trotter-Nama comes alive for the third time. ♦ Originally published in India Today. It’s hard to imagine that the author of a book as gargantuan, complex and exuberant as The Trotter-Nama ever suffered such a crisis of faith in his creation — which had been out of print for an extended period — that …
Exile and the Kingdom
An ongoing exhibition of miniatures inspired by the Ramayana, at the Met in New York City ♦ Originally published in India Today. Far from the bustling, big-ticket shows of Dutch Masters or Camp fashion, beyond the high-ceilinged galleries of large American canvases, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a maze of jewel-box galleries. Hosting exhibitions …
East is Beast
Book Review ♦ New Kings of the World: The Rise and Rise of Eastern Pop Culture, By Fatima Bhutto Originally published in Open. As 2014’s feeble monsoon faltered to a close, India burnt for Fawad Khan. The Pakistani actor had just crossed over into Bollywood with Khubsoorat, reducing women across the country ‘to wobbling blobs of …
The Book of Waswo
The new miniatures from the studio of Waswo X. Waswo are as captivating as his latest photobook. ♦ Originally published in India Today. Nearly two decades ago, when Waswo X. Waswo was travelling in Pushkar, a group of camel herders started referring to him as “Chacha”. “The name just stuck,” the artist tells me in …
Greener Pastures
Aunty Sudha Aunty Radha is a world apart, capturing the slow rhythm of daily life in a kothi in Lahra, Uttar Pradesh, without embellishment. ♦ Originally published in India Today. One of the most striking things about Tanuja Chandra’s first documentary, which premiered internationally last month and features her 93 and 86-year-old aunts, is her …
Floods and Streams of Anarchy
William Dalrymple discusses his new book on the rise of the East India Company ♦ Originally published in Mumbai Mirror. “At the dawn of the nineteenth century all seemed dark; the stars were paling, and it was not by any means plain what the day was likely to be,” wrote orientalist historian HG Keene in …
The Writer’s Endurance Test
Book Review ♦ The Assassination of Indira Gandhi: The Collected Stories of Upamanyu Chatterjee, Volume I Originally published in India Today. From the ‘hazaar fucked’ slang of English, August through six subsequent novels and a novella, linguistic playfulness has always been a central feature of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s style, enamouring as many readers as it puts …
Interview: Raj Kamal Jha on ‘The City and the Sea’
Indian Express editor Raj Kamal Jha sheds light on why he believes stories like Nirbhaya’s need to be told through fiction. ♦ In 2012, the initial response to the gang rape of a physiotherapy student in Delhi was gut-driven, a tidal wave of pure outrage and protest. A documentary followed a few years later. If the …
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A Deadly Cocktail in Delhi
Book Review: Killing Time in Delhi ♦By Ravi Shankar Etteth A certain kind of book predictably gets described as a “heady cocktail” of sex, drugs, crime and money. Killing Time In Delhi is such a book. As with other quaffable novels that suggest endless parties and rapid repartee, high-polish beauties and dark underbellies, Killing Time is about society’s upper …
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. …
Gossip Folks
From feuding queens to rebel sultans, the dead are alive in Manu Pillai’s books. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. When Manu S. Pillai (“the S is important”) and I sat down to talk, gossip was at the top of the table. We were at a mutual friend’s apartment, our chat getting progressively boozy as …
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 …
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. …
bpb Review: Bo-Tai, Mehrauli
Bandage dresses, duck sausage, and Naga fireballs. Oh Mehrauli. ♦ To be seated at the bar at Bo-Tai, restaurateur Zorawar Kalra’s newest establishment, is to survey a food empire from one of its loftiest watchtowers. Above us, the liquor shelves bristle with bottles of Cîroc vodka and Monkey 47 gin; around us waiters and hosts …
“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 …
A Photographer Takes the Bull by the Horns in His Jallikattu Series
Ryan Lobo wrestles with the controversial tradition of bull-baiting in Tamil Nadu. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. For the past few years, Jallikattu has been a flashpoint—often covered in the news as a conflict between tradition and modernity, or between India’s northern and southern centres of power. The Tamil celebration—in which men wrestle with bulls in an …
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Privet Party: Malviya Nagar Has A New Russian Delivery Place
Vod more do you want? ♦ In 2001, when Vladimir Putin was finishing up the first year of his first presidential term, a Russian named Aleksandr Melnikov arrived in Delhi to sell leather garments. Instead, he ended up opening a tiny Russian eatery in Anand Niketan. Beloved by a small, loyal clientele for almost a …
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Beef in Sheep’s Clothing
A chef spills the beans about serving beef in India. ♦ Welcome back to Restaurant Confessionals , where we talk to the unheard voices of the restaurant industry from both the front-of-house and back-of-house about what really goes on behind the scenes at your favourite establishments. This time, a Delhi chef tells us about his beef with the ban. …
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: 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). …
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. …
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 …
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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bpb Review: Café Hameen Ast’o, Said-ul-ajaib, Saket
Firdaus lost and found. ♦ In a million tourism brochures and travel articles, both Delhi and Kashmir claim to have inspired the Persian couplet: “Agar firdaus bar-ruu-i zamiin ast / Hamiin ast o hamiin ast o hamiin ast”— If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here. The bumpy …
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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 …
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 …
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 …
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bpbScoop: Devan’s Now Has A Café
The old coffee store now makes drinks, because Devan is a place on earth. ♦ Stopping by recently for our go-to bag of beans (shoppers often have their own customized blends of the various grades of coffee), we were pleasantly surprised to see something new brewing at Delhi’s favourite coffee store, Devan’s. A big sign hangs …
bpbReview: Rustom’s Parsi Bhonu, Delhi Parsi Anjuman
A Delhi classic gets a (lagan) nu lease of life. ♦ The Zoroastrian fire temple on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg has nourished the souls of the city’s small Parsi population since the 1960s. But it was Dhun Bagli’s kitchen in the Mengusi Parsi Dharamshala next-door that kept the community’s stomachs sated during social functions, and, …
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For Good Resin
On the frankincense trail in Muscat. ♦ Oman smells like Christmas all year round. Walking in out of the hot sun—whether it’s into a mosque, a hotel, or someone’s home—means being engulfed by the pervasive plumes of frankincense smoke. It fills every interior space with a rich, piney fragrance, nuanced with hints of citrus peel; …