Stories about Delhi, or with a Delhi connection.
A private detective and head of her own agency, Bhavna Paliwal is intimately familiar with Delhi’s darker side. ♦ When Bhavna Paliwal came to Delhi at the age of 22, she intended to study public relations but soon switched to journalism. “I thought journalists were a big deal and could do anything,” she says, sitting …
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 …
Kanak Mathur’s delivery service sends old Delhi cuisine to new Delhi homes. ♦ If anyone can lay claim to an authentic Delhi food culture, it is the Kayasth community – the resident Hindu administrators for royal and colonial rulers in the capital and elsewhere. Much has been written about Kayasth cooking’s syncretic, Ganga-Jamuni nature; the kababs …
Qorma kofta with a side of crazy love in an artist’s family restaurant. ♦ Hidden in a quiet gully off Kalkaji’s main market, L’Amour Fou Afghan catches our eye for its location and its extraordinary name: Afghan eateries usually call themselves Balkh or Kabul or Mazaar, and cluster in neighbourhoods with settled patron populations, such …
One Lajpat banker sends you chakhna and cocktail mixes; the other will rent sheesha. Compounding interest? ♦ Whether the weather, the political climate, or the deep freeze of your finances, two start-ups from the Greater Lajpat Area promise to improve matters by bringing the party to your doorstep this winter. (We were just motivated by desperation …
Party Workers: Two New Services to Bookmark for Your Next Bash Read More »
2010 was a red letter year for Delhi transport. The airport’s T3 was inaugurated in time to welcome athletes arriving for the Commonwealth Games; the Delhi Metro opened two more lines. Cycle lanes sprang up along recently constructed BRT routes. A fleet of big, blue high-capacity buses also joined their shiny new red and green …
Drive-By Hooting: On Board Delhi Tourism’s Party Bus Read More »
Marking an anniversary and the National Museum of Natural History ♦ I believe it was for Time Out Delhi‘s first “Beat the Heat” issue, in May 2007, that Samar went off to rattle the dusty bones of the National Museum of Natural History. And I have a vague memory of Radhika, on a city-wide hunt …
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 and hoi polloi. …
Looking for home at the National Museum’s Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps exhibition.
Delhi: Unknown Tales of a City By RV Smith (Roli, ₹295) Among the contemporary crop of Delhi’s flâneurs and society chroniclers, Ronald Vivian Smith is a tall figure. The septuagenarian arrived from Agra in the late 1950s, and his regular columns in The Statesman and The Hindu span the decades of wandering he has done in …