Interview

A Photographer Takes the Bull by the Horns in His Jallikattu Series

Ryan Lobo wrestles with the controversial tradition of bull-baiting in Tamil Nadu. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. For the past few years, Jallikattu has been a flashpoint—often covered in the news as a conflict between tradition and modernity, or between India’s northern and southern centres of power. The Tamil celebration—in which men wrestle with bulls in an …

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Beef in Sheep’s Clothing

A chef spills the beans about serving beef in India. ♦ Welcome back to Restaurant Confessionals , where we talk to the unheard voices of the restaurant industry from both the front-of-house and back-of-house about what really goes on behind the scenes at your favourite establishments. This time, a Delhi chef tells us about his beef with the ban. …

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News flashback

Anuja Chauhan’s third romantic comedy is set in Delhi of the 1980s ♦ A tall, dark and distinctively handsome journalist with a conscience meets a beautiful, intelligent “DeshDarpan” newsreader with four sisters, a house on Hailey Road and a distinctive mole on her chin. Delhi in the 1980s and India’ widening mediascape are the backdrop of …

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Holy trinity

Manil Suri on writing the third of his mythological novels ♦ Math professor and writer Manil Suri grew up in Bombay, but has lived in the USA since attending college there in the 1980s. Suri revisited his home city in his first novel, Death of Vishnu, which was long-listed for a Booker in 2001. His …

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Eternal returns

William Dalrymple on researching Return of a King, his history of the First Afghan War ♦ In Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, William Dalrymple’s third book set during the decline of Mughal rule, the Scottish historian and adoptive Dilliwala chronicles the first British military foray into the land of Khurasan, between 1839 and …

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Long exposure

Chirodeep Chaudhuri captured Durga Puja at his ancestral village in Bengal over 12 years ♦ Twelve years is a long engagement for an artistic project. But by saving up his vacation, Chirodeep Chaudhuri (formerly Time Out’s national art director), managed to capture Durga Puja in his family village of Amadpur over just such a length of …

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Murder most fowl

Tarquin Hall discusses his latest Delhi mystery ♦ For the third of the Vish Puri mystery series, journalist and author Tarquin Hall dispatched the Punjabi private eye far from his Khan Market office. Hall met Sonal Shah at Khan’s L’Opéra patisserie to chat about The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken. Did you set out …

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Yoko Ono

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 …

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Consuming passion

Anjum Anand ♦ Anjum Anand served a station full of beefy British fire-fighters naan and lamb curry – cooked by one of their fellows – in the last season of her debut cooking show Indian Food Made Easy. However, the meal was not as heavy as the usual lunch the fire-fighters consume. “Light” Indian food …

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