Writing related to urban life.
Once upon a time, the Old City was besieged by ghosts ♦ Read this article as part of Time Out Delhi’s “Haunted Delhi” cover story. “No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman,” wrote Rudyard Kipling in a short story from 1888, “but many English ghosts have scared the life …
A hidden gem ♦ This article is part of a longer story on Delhi’s museums. [cycloneslider id=”gargoti-mineral-museum”]Dark, mysterious purple amethysts, spiky crystals of chalcedony, rheumy quartz and brilliant blue cavancite line the shelves. It’s not hard to imagine a sighting of the Virgin Mary or an Om within all this lustre (there are, in fact, …
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 – …
Three transport museums light up the road ahead ♦ This article is part of a longer story on Delhi’s museums. The words “Guggenheim”and “Gurgaon” have rarely, if ever, been uttered in the same breath. Yet Vikas Harish had the audacity to refer to the New York landmark as he talked about an upcoming suburban museum. It …
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.
The world in miniature ♦ This article is part of a longer story on Delhi’s museums. [cycloneslider id=”shankar-dolls-museum”]To celebrate Janmashtami this year, the doll-makers at this museum’s hidden workshop spent four months working on a new diorama. It’s the 45-year-old museum’s only multi-sensory display: a tableau of Vasudeva crossing the Yamuna with baby Krishna on …
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 …
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 …
Are green buildings just ivory towers in disguise? ♦ As a changing climate and growing population stretch Delhi’s reserves of energy and water, the importance of buildings that work with the environment, rather than against it, grows as well. Some buildings already do – if you go by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design …
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 …