Published and unpublished writing on art, books, cities, food, travel and other reportage.
The new Ethiopian Cultural Centre ♦ Set in a couple of low-lying whitewashed buildings with red tiled roofs clustered around a courtyard, the unpresuming new Ethiopian Cultural Centre brings a taste of Addis Ababa to Delhi. Director Ashok Verma, who set up the centre in tandem with the Ethiopian Embassy, met us in the coffee …
Ritu Dalmia’s return to Hauz Khas Village ♦ Restaurateur Ritu Dalmia has come full circle since her opening first restaurant in Hauz Khas Village, almost two decades ago, and Diva Piccola, her new café venture in that neighbourhood. Not only does Dalmia have the comfort Italian formula down pat, nowadays the mere fact of existence …
West Delhi Special ♦ A Time Out Delhi cover story from March 2012 featuring a collection of stories from West Delhi neighbourhoods. Read the full story below, download it as a pretty PDF here, or find it online at
Anjum Hasan’s short stories score on pacing and plot ♦ Tortured as some of them are, it’s a pleasure to slip inside the minds of the characters of Anjum Hasan’s fourth book. In this collection of 13 perfect short stories, Hasan picks moments out of ordinary lives set in Bangalore, Shillong (where she grew up) …
The new face of Indian comics ♦ A few decades ago, the Indian comic books scene was burgeoning. The art may have been simple, and most stories and characters lifted straight from American comic books, but lending libraries were important social hubs in cities and small towns. Regional comic books and Indian superheroes made reading …
Authentic, not atmospheric ♦ It’s been 11 years since Sakura first opened in Delhi. Since then, the city’s self-proclaimed “first Japanese restaurant” has opened a branch in Gurgaon, won every food award in its category and, recently, revamped its original location and menu. The new Sakura at the Metropolitan Hotel remains fundamentally the same after …
Palash Krishna Mehrotra on India’s flitty young things ♦ Form shouldn’t always mirror content. Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s musings on “the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolour Youth” flit from subject to subject in short chapters, resting a moment on the bloom of homosexual rights (“Gay ho!”, eight pages), then on the thorny issue of morality …
The avante-garde artist performs and exhibits in Delhi ♦ This article is part of a cover story on performance art in India. Yoko Ono’s artistic journey has been a strange one. When she became a household name, her avant-garde art became just one more reason for the mainstream media to vilify her. But as Dilliwalas …
Performance art: History, highlights and what to see at the India Art Fair 2012 ♦ Time Out Delhi‘s timeline of performance art from India and elsewhere, published January 20, 2012. Read the full story below, download it as a pretty PDF here, or find it in somewhat mangled form online at Time Out Delhi.
Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain ♦ Part of a longer cover story on Delhi’s theatre scene. If Delhi’s theatre universe can lay claim to any dramatic form, it’s dastangoi, the almost-forgotten art of narrating epics (dastans). Dastangoi has roots going back several centuries to recitals of the Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, but the form got a second …