Published and unpublished writing on art, books, cities, food, travel and other reportage.
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 »
Delhi’s Japanese dining scene may have a slight edge on Mumbai’s in terms of numbers, but with the novelty of Tsukiji-sourced seafood wearing thin in recent years, the arrival of Bandra’s Kofuku restaurant in the refurbished Ansal Plaza ought to rejuvenate this genre, with its casual approach to offerings that go beyond sushi and teppanyaki. …
A midnight takeaway delivers food that would be ambitious for a sit-down restaurant. ♦ The midnight burger has become an heir of sorts to the 24/7 hot dog, the first after-hours trend to help expand Delhi’s traditional late-night kebabs and parathas. A new fly-by-night specimen, operating out of GK-I, adds itself to the flock. Knock Knock, Hoot’s …
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. …
The Cosmopolitans ♦Anjum HasanPenguin India, 309 pages, Rs 499. “Being a modern Indian is hard work,” a former king tells Qayanaat, the protagonist of Anjum Hasan’s The Cosmopolitans. If this is true for the King, the dispossessed monarch of fictional, small-town Simhal, it’s certainly so for Qayanaat, a 53-year-old single woman who lives in Bengaluru, subsisting …
City of Spies ♦ By Sorayya Khan Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2015, 239 pp., Rs 295 (PB) ISBN 978-93-83064-78-6 Pakistan was scorchingly hot during the summer of 1977, the narrator of City of Spies recalls: “the newspapers were filled with worry that rain might never come”. And the persistent Cold War chill in relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union only …
Looking for home at the National Museum’s Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps exhibition.