Cities – Page 3 – Sonal Shah

How a 1.5-Generation Immigrant Came to Love the Strip Malls of America

“The Trip That Changed the Way I Travel” for National Geographic Traveller India. ♦ Washington DC, USA “Welcome to the Valley of Death,” said my dance classmate grimly. We stood on the stoop of our Kuchipudi teacher’s cookie-cutter clapboard house, contemplating the uniformity of the landscape around us. Once farmland, this developed acreage in Maryland, …

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Eight Women: Mehrun-Nisha Shaukat Ali

While Mehrun-Nisha Shaukat Ali once dreamed about becoming a soldier or a police officer, she ultimately put her brawn to use as a bouncer. ♦ Whenever there was military action on the border, Mehrun-Nisha Shaukat Ali and her six brothers and sisters used to stand on the roof of their house in Saharanpur, in Uttar …

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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. …

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Eight Women: Bhavna Paliwal

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 …

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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 …

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Mathur Nature: A Kayasth Cook’s Family Secrets

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 …

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bpb Review: L’ Amour Fou Afghan, Kalkaji

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 …

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Party Workers: Two New Services to Bookmark for Your Next Bash

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 …

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Drive-By Hooting: On Board Delhi Tourism’s Party Bus

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 …

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Watching it burn

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 …

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