Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I never went to another art exhibition, read another novel or poem or listened to another musical performance. It would be lesser, of course, without the banquet of earthly delights to wonder at and rejoice in; and would leave me without the comfort of a […] Read more
February 2013
Today is Priya’s birthday, so my mother asked Mishri Lal the Cook to make a feast to celebrate the happy day. Significant days in the calendar- birthdays, anniversaries, special prayer days- are marked by specially delicious and calorific dishes: potatoes curried with tomatoes, sweet and sour chickpeas, puffy fried puris and a sticky semolina halvah […] Read more
There is a particular excitement in spotting an unknown bird, especially one with a lively plumage. The one I saw in a Delhi park was round and plump like a robin, but its front was a glossy dark blue, its top feathers were sooty like charcoal and it sported a red flash on its rump. […] Read more
Upper middle- class Delhi socialites (just “middle” class without the “upper” is distinctly pejorative in our immensely status conscious city) can afford luxuries like facials and deep-pore cleansing at suburban beauty parlours. But what a struggle to present the glowing complexion of admens’ dreams when you have to make do with Delhi air and its […] Read more
Alfonso de Albuquerque (the King of Mangoes is named after him) arrived in Goa in 1542 followed by his Portugese compatriots a few years later. They colonized this end of the Malabar coast, becoming busily engaged in commerce and conversion and hugely brutal with it. In 1961 our idolised first Prime Minister, Mr Nehru, sent […] Read more
We Indians are all familiar with time-honoured and, frankly, yawn-making clichés about our distinctive regional pecadilloes; after all, what sets a Punjabi apart from a Bengali and a Bengali from a Southerner or a Gujerati from a U.P bhaiya? We fondly cherish stereotypes of the brainy Bong who eats a lot of fish and thus […] Read more
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