Published and unpublished writing on art, books, cities, food, travel and other reportage.
Roadside rendezvous ♦ From its Toile de Jouy wallpaper with dancing French country couples to its aqua wrought-iron chairs and mixed-up crockery, this bakery is a little oasis of charm on the stretch between Mehrauli and Chattarpur. With a stone wall façade and muntined windows, illuminated by the warm yellow light inside, The French Affair …
The case for Paharganj ♦ For years, there’s been no stemming the southbound, outward drift of Delhi nightlife. The mega-clubs of Noida and Gurgaon first lured revelers away from the city with the promise of police raid-free parties. Then South Delhi got its own malls, complete with rooftop clubs: extravagant light-and-sound beacons of the lush …
Delhi’s new literary festival is an appropriately polyglot affair ♦ If India is, as Mark Twain put it, “the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues”, then Delhi is the place where all these nations and tongues inevitably meet. This fortnight, a new festival acknowledges the importance of the capital as a literary destination …
Tripping the bite fantastic ♦ Being high isn’t usually associated with great gastronomic discretion. Smoking up is more likely to leave you seeing the world in a grain of fried rice than it is to get you drooling over haute cuisine. Then again, “usual” is nowhere close to what Smoke House Room is aiming for. …
There’s a costume for every occasion at Abhiruchi ♦ Read this article as part of Time Out Delhi’s “Haunted Delhi” cover story. Two men walk into a costume shop. They’re looking for a child-sized potato outfit. Mrs Wadhwa doesn’t bat an eyelid. She has an entire vegetable patch worth of costumes: onions, tomatoes, aubergines and …
The bhoot is out there ♦ From the haunting of 10 Janpath to Gef the singing mongoose – not to mention djinns, headless sepoys and Certified Leading Paranormal Investigators – this Time Out Delhi cover package from October 28, 2011 chronicles the capital’s ghost stories. Read the full story below, download it as a pretty …
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 …
The man behind a flood of translations is swept up in his work ♦ Nearly 15 years had passed since Arunava Sinha translated Chowringhee at the request of the Bengali classic’s author, Sankar. Back then, in 1992, Sinha was embarking on his professional career and considered his bridge translation (an English draft for a French edition) …
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 – …