When Delhi sang in Kannada

It happened on a whim. We just happened to be hanging around on a Sunday evening when one of our friends, Prasid, happened to call us to ask whether we want to go for a gig. Now, this being the final day of the Delhi leg of the NH7 festival, I was feeling slightly guilty because I didn’t go (even though all this time I was adamant I didn’t want to go because of the poor quality of the line-ups). Thus when Prasid asked us if we wanted to go, I didn’t need much convincing and ‘persuaded’ Urmi to come along.

The gig was the final day of the SAARC music festival, held at the Purana Qila. We were a little bit late because we stopped on our way for late lunch/early dinner at Flaming Wok, CR Park (a brilliant, brilliant meal, but that’s another story!) so by the time we reached the venue, it was already quite dark and the gig was in its third act – The Susmit Sen Chronicles.

Dark. That is what the venue was. Good luck to all of you with night blindness. Ask me if there were 500 people there or 2500. Go on, ask me! I literally have no clue. Sitting in office on Monday, I found out that there were at least 2 of my colleagues who had also attended the concert, and they probably passed within a few feet of me, but I had no idea. Running into Prasid was pure fluke.

But enough of my bitching. Back to the concert.

To be fair, I probably expected a little too much from Susmit Sen Chronicles. The ex-Indian Ocean guitarist was quite brilliant with his old band, but he seemed poor, almost – dare I use the word – hesitant, on stage. The vocalist sang alright I suppose, but his was a voice “to lead a chorus”, as Urmi put it, not to stand out, to make one stop and really listen. But then again, I am a biased observer, at least as far as this topic is concerned.

Next up was Nepali rock band, Albatross. Singing in their native tongue, the crowd nevertheless enjoyed their songs quite a lot, pumping their fists at some of their heavier riffs and humming along with their softer tunes – obviously, hardly anyone knew the lyrics. However, it did prove that age-old saying about music transcending all boundaries – everyone pretty much seemed to enjoy their music. One of the most memorable moments of the evening was when the vocalist of Albatross, Sirish, requested the organisers to switch off the stage lights. He then asked everyone to light their mobile screens and wave their mobiles at the stage. It was breathtakingly beautiful, made all the better by the slow melody that the
band was playing.

And finally the last act – Raghu Dixit. I am ashamed to admit that this was my first ever time at a Raghu Dixit concert. Yes, yes, I know, it’s despicable and I should probably give up my right to call myself a music aficionado. But still, the important point is that I finally broke my duck and went for a Raghu Dixit concert. And. It. Was. So. Worth. It!

I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of it... just believe me when I say that it was a superb concert. The way Raghu Dixit engages his audience is brilliant! There is one particular song of his that he sings in Kannada, Lokada Kalaji, that basically translates to “don’t worry, be happy, but if you worry, I won’t give a damn!” It is this with this song that he really engaged with the crowd, making them sing in Kannada and basically joking about how he should be made the Karnataka CM because he made a whole group of Delhites speak in Kannada.

Jokes apart though, it was a fun night. And Raghu Dixit has, in Urmi and me, gained two fans for life!

---Kartikeya

India In My Blog

I first met Rohit and Kamna at a wedding. It was a very glitzy affair, the wedding, with paper festoons impersonating as balls of fire lined around the general periphery of the lawn, and was altogether the sort of place where you came across people you had never met before. They were seated at a table, a little way out, and upon telling a friend of a friend that Kartikeya and I wrote a blog—and that I, predominantly, squealed fashion at the word go—I was excitedly taken to meet them. Wife and husband greeted me with exquisite enthusiasm, the kind born of fresh new entrepreneurs that would have you know why their idea is so much more brilliant and better than the rest. And the punchline? Their idea IS so much more brilliant and better, and so far off the regular chip off the old block, that you warm to them instantly. Rohit and Kamna run the online shopping destination India In My Bag; except that it is so much more than your run-of-the-mill shop-stop-at-the-click. Here’s how.

“IndiaInMyBag was a result of the passion of a couple that loved to travel and shop – well at least the wife does!”—an About Us that begins on such a jaunty line immediately sets the ball rolling for what this pair of fashion founders has in mind. A web page that opens up almost like a wondrous portal to the annals of everything India and Indian, yet rehashed and packaged to appeal to an instinct that is universal, almost primal—the hoarding instinct! For the moment you browse through their page, you shall want to have a look at everything on it, want to hoard one item atleast out of every collection of items on that page. Neatly compartmentalized into: COLLECTIONS, PRODUCTS, CRAFTSMANSHIP and DESIGNERS AND BOUTIQUES, you already know what is coming. IndiaInMyBag showcases designs from all over the country. As they would like to call it, they capture and bring forth stories. Stories they indeed are, for that delightful gossamer silk sheen of a Coimbatore saree tells its own tale, as does that lovely blue encasing of a stole wrapped around your neck of a particularly nippy wintry evening. These are not clothes items so much as they are ‘pieces’; pieces brought together from every nook and cranny, gully and bylane of the country. The designers themselves have been sourced and scouted out with huge effort and patience by Kamna, Rohit and the team, often a familiar or upcoming name, often a relative shadow, previously content to weave his/her clothes in the anonymity of their hidden homes. IndiaInMyBag gently nudges them out of these shadows and welcomes them into the spotlight.

Speaking as an unabashed online-shopping-addict (I have on more than one occasion been pre-approved for a purchase without the customary confirmation call—fellow shopaholics will know what I mean ;) and was, once, er—on SMS terms with a shopping executive for I had come to know her particularly well through the habitual purchases of many months!), I have traversed many a page on the Internet. Colourful, well-designed, a bounty of attractive discounts (and-psst-an-extra-off-thrown-in-just-for-you! Refer to fellow shopaholics for clarification), and what have you, these online fashion sites have had it all. What I hadn’t discovered so far though, is that one shining beacon of difference that would mark A from B. IndiaInMyBag I can safely say has restored much of that hope, and invited a lot more wonder.



Coming to the important part now; the PRICES! Are they very much different from retail stores, or other online portals? Well, the answer would have to be indecisive hesitation. And why not? For how can you compare a pair of denims elsewhere to a collection of hand-woven stoles picked at with eager nimble fingers by some hitherto unknown lady in the quieter nooks of Bengal? Or, as Rohit and Kamna tell us, to a story of Phulkari Bagh embroidered by a woman in Punjab for her grandchild’s birth—a piece to be worn again at that very grandchild’s wedding! Yet they are priced at just the average amount that most other shopping sites pitch their clothes at. A selection of silk sarees revolve around the Rs. 4,500 mark, while stoles come from anywhere between Rs. 800 and Rs. 2,500. Authentic Punjabi Jutis are as economical as Rs. 1,500, while men’s kurtas too fit the standard market of the Rs.800-2000 market.

Ultimately IndiaInMyBag tries to be no more than what its name humbly proclaims it to be: an amalgamation of all things Indian, to borrow an over-used cliché: very like the traditional khichdi with just the right mix of contemporary condiment!



P.S. I have already gone back to browse through the site atleast seven times while researching for this article, and have stopped and opened several tabs. There is a particularly exquisite looking blue scarf that I am currently salivating over, but I am not telling which!

--- Urmi

Colours Come Alive

I’m at the Shridharani Art Gallery at the Triveni Kala Sangam, tucked away on a street between the busy Mandi House roundabout and popular eating destination Bengali Market. The building is deserted and I feel like I have wandered in by accident. The vibes that the empty halls give me is not of hostility – I don’t feel like a wanderer – rather I feel as if the walls themselves are surprised to see me, a visitor. Perhaps the sense of loneliness I experience are because of the late hour, relatively speaking of course. It’s 7 pm, it is a typical dark, slightly misty November evening and all self-respecting karmcharis have left for the night. Being just before closing time, only the guards remain, and they are huddled up in their sweaters, shawls and other warm clothing.

At the end of the dimly lit corridors is a hall brightly lit. Curious, I investigate, and as soon as I open the glass doors, I am hit by a myriad of colours that seems to surround, envelop me, but rather than suffocate, these colours heighten my senses – the walls are covered with paintings, and looking at them, I feel awestruck.

A small, polite man with a scraggly beard approaches me. He was sitting in a corner and I had not even noticed him as I entered. Hastily, I change my expression (I admit, I must have looked quite the fool, standing like that with my jaw hanging open). He introduces himself as the artist, Madan Lal, who has painted each one of the paintings. Currently settled in Chandigarh, his quiet demeanour in no way betrays the fact that he is an internationally renowned painter, having successfully held exhibitions in some of the most fabulous art centres including Stockholm, Berlin and London. 

Madan Lal’s exhibition, Urban Mirage, explores the increasingly busy but ultimately hollow modern urban existence that plagues humanity. “The problem with us humans is that our yearning for possessions just increases – materialism has never decreases. That is what my paintings explore.” Among themes, he explores through his painting the reluctance of procreation in modern married urban citizens in ‘Aquarium’; the five phases of life, from birth to death in ‘Where Seeds To Grow’ and true emotion of a person in a crowd of masks in ‘Faces’. ‘Faces’ in particular stands out for me – as an English literature student, I am eerily reminded of Mohan Rakesh’s play Halfway House or Aadhe Adhure.

“I chose the word ‘mirage’ because that is mrig trishna, a desire that can never be fulfilled. Our current existence has left us like the egret – always flying high up in the sky whether it is day or night, and crying out for satisfaction, but we never come down to land, which is what we were meant to do,”  Lal says.

For him, painting is a never-ending journey. “I have no focal point in my paintings, rather my creations showcase what I feel are the complexities of human relationships and life.” His paintings are awash with symbolism – almost every painting has arrows pointing in every direction, which depict the inner and outer chaos that plagues the urban human life. Other symbols that are present in his works are that of the parrot – for him, representing love, since according to mythology, the parrot is the vehicle of the god Kamdev. “I like to communicate to my audience through symbols; all that is needed is a close look and all that I wish to communicate will come through,” he says.

Sufism is well and alive in his works. “I hail from Punjab, and Sufism is seeped into our literature, our very culture,” Lal explains. “Sufism is not limited to any religion; it is a way of life. Right from childhood, it is inculcated into every sort of our creative outcomes.” 

As a sleepy night watchman comes to usher us out, we talk about the merits and demerits of different art styles (I’ll confess, I just knew the terms Cubism, Fauvism and a couple of others, like Neo-Dadism, which I guessed the names of). Walking out, I am still thinking about what all Madan Lal has just told me. An evening just got transformed for me from a dull one to an intellectually enriching one.

And yet again I marvel at the different shades of this city – from being asked by an exasperating rich-boy-wearing-shades-at-night if I know who his father is (which actually happened to me earlier in the day because I prevented him from cutting the line at the metro station, true story!), to being bowled over by acrylic-on-canvas.

---Kartikeya

A Night at Spook Central

Halloween. The night of the free witches and the free cocktails. It is a free world, mostly, after all. You can dress up just as you like, whether as a witch or a banshee, or to relegate suspicious-looking gender stereotypes, ghouls and Draculas too. This you may do on Halloween, the 31^st of October—or any other day of the year for that matter. The world of free spookies and free cocktails are yours for the taking after all. You must be wondering why I harp on ‘free cocktails’ (and here I said it a third unabashed time) when clearly the theme is Halloween. The deal is, I didn’t get any. Sigh, here is how I almost did.

So Kartikeya and I (ever partners-in-weirdsville!) set off to Hauz Khas village to explore what it was this place had to offer on the occasion of Halloween. HKV has ALWAYS, read ALWAYS been a general blingo-holic, binge-oholic Delhiite’s delight and it has never miserably disappointed. Armed with such self-assuredness built over years of Delhi navigation (and haven’t we all!), we landed up at HKV totally expecting to be bowled over. And bowled over we were! From where the Village begins, from the undulating crescendo that is the front of the wooden restaurant Imperfecto, all the way down to the famous lake, the zone was suddenly Spook Central for the night. HKV’s glitz and glamour of riot and colour had metamorphosed into black and gore, noir and panache. Banners and streamers of black flapped against restaurant walls, skull-and-crossbones motifs splashed across them. Skeletons and their kith and kin leaned casually against doorways inviting you in, mouths wide open. It was eerie, it was delicious, it was just what I expected!

Having just walked in, a guy took extra care to walk up to me and hand me a coupon, completely ignoring Kartikeya. I soon found out why; it was a complimentary cocktail coupon for the ladies: one of those freebies life hands to you that, for that one joyous infinitesimal moment of raising your glass—to that  last free gulp, entirely silences the raging feminist in you that would otherwise have protested against freebies :D. So of course I was propelled to follow my feet, and my feet in turn my throat, which would have me walk towards the place that served up these magical free cocktails: Themis. Themis is located at the top of a little staircase, that you come to after having walked through the most unassuming of gullies. ‘Nuff said, it isn’t hard to find and we were there. At the gate, we were both offered Halloween masks which I accepted with a whoop of delight. Unashamed photographic evidence follows ( :D !)

I posed with skeletons and men in horns and capes and took our table. As it was our first time in, we were both still drinking the place in till I remembered the actual drink I had come for. Happily I made my way to the bar, only to have my hopes dashed to the ground when it was announced to me that I must pay 500 rupees for my desired cocktail as ‘free time’ would begin only after 9.30! I was disappointed for the coupon had mentioned nothing. I resigned myself to waiting a half hour, and with Kartikeya, proceeded to order a pizza while we waited. The waiter then informed us it would only be available if we paid for it first. I am not quite sure if such was the policy of the night, or the running Halloween theme, but needless to say, it put us off almost instantly and we left, wanting to sample nothing!

After this of course, our path was clear. The answer had stared us in the face right from the beginning, we had just chosen to walk by it, for it was the obvious, the easy give-away. So we went to Imperfecto. Yes it has never disappointed and it did not this night of Halloween either. Sporting perhaps the biggest Halloween banner in HKV from the roof to the bottom of its building, Imperfecto filled our halloween-hungry hearts with gladness. On the staircase up to the roof (if you have been, you know there is hardly a better seat), I bumped into a hanging skeleton and got the fright of my life when it shrieked back in indignation at me! Ah for the first Halloween fright for the night! Ek to banta tha :D. Kartikeya and I got excellent seats. They were right at the edge of the little winding stream of water they have running through a divide in the floor, ripples of water rushing over clear cobbled stones, while we watched, in chairs right next to it, catching the many, many lights that had decorated the place ever-so-beautifully. The night was made excellent also by the satisfaction of having been served by men in red-tinged Mummy bandages and black costumes, who gallivanted here and there! We hadn’t really come to eat, to be honest. I’d had a massive diwali feast-and-function at office that day and Kartikeya was full, and truth be told, we’d merely meant to “check out” a Halloween-ish ambience. To revel fully in the black, black glory that pervades you only for a night.

Yet not eating at Imperfecto is a sin, and hence we ordered their Grilled Tenderloin: a tried and tested favourite. The meal was finished in five minutes flat! It had been romantic for it had just been the two of us, it had been sheltered even in the midst of fake cobwebs ambitiously climbing down to your hair, and skeletons all around you, for even in the midst of all that spookiness, we felt protected by the singular peculiarity of the night. For such is that night, Halloween. It is of a queerness that abounds not just in costumes and face masks; or in blood pellets and audio recording devices of banshee cries; it is a queerness that protects and at the same time, encourages your inner singularity to unleash itself, be it as a ghoul for the night, or the Heath Ledger-made-legendary Joker you always wanted to be. Or, as in my case, simply yourself, with your inner whacked out psycho worn proudly on your sleeve J How you wished you could be it every night!

---Urmi

Books for just 20 bucks

Warm, sweaty and irritable. That is what I was when I came across this gem of a stall. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind and start from the beginning.

Technology and I don’t seem to get along these days. My camera got stolen, my music system’s on the blink, my laptop’s keyboard has stopped working… even the goddamn clock in my room has stopped running. So when my phone started acting up one day after it came back from the workshop, it took all of my self-restraint (and my sister constantly reminding me that my phone cost a bomb) to stop me from smashing it with a sledge hammer. Instead, I wrote a very nasty letter to Sony India Pvt Ltd, and lo behold, they responded! Called me up to say that they were very sorry, and begged me to come to their workshop again.

It so happened that Urmi had stayed the night, so the next morning, the two of us went off to the workshop, which, I swear on Tandoori Chicken, is located in a place that God is seriously considering to turn into an extension of Hell – Laxmi Nagar. Narrow, dingy lanes, traffic everywhere, constantly being assaulted by a hundred horns by frustrated cars, autos, bikes and yes, even trucks, trying to navigate through a slew of humanity – though to be fair, the canine and the bovine world were also quite well represented… well, you get the idea. 

Funnily enough, when we reached the area, it was quite deserted, relatively speaking, of course. What I mean is that a million people weren’t trying to kill each other by running over each other. And we were quite lucky to get into the workshop early, and we were treated quite well. And then, while the waiting was happening that we, our throats parched after a night of boozing, decided to nip down to the nearby juice shop and have a glass each. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

In the 20-odd minutes that we were inside, what seemed like the entire population of Australia (with New Zealand and most of South America also thrown in for good measure) descended upon Laxmi Nagar. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it took us half an hour just to reach the juice shop, a mere 100 metres away. And that’s when we saw the beauty… a man with a rickety stall, selling…books.

He had neatly arranged the books into 4 categories – new releases, bestsellers, Indian bestsellers and assorted books. Each came with their own fixed price – the new releases were for Rs 150, bestsellers for Rs 100, Indian bestsellers for Rs 80 and the assorted books for just 20 bucks.

The books were a combination of pirated, second hand and defected copies, but no book was in an outright bad condition. There were all sorts there – M&Bs, John Grishams, abridged versions of classics, even a couple of books in a foreign language (German, says Urmi). And that’s when we found it. A cookbook, with its cover ripped off but otherwise in excellent condition. And what a cookbook it was! It had recipes for everything from cheesecakes to smoked lamb steak, with quite a few cocktails thrown in for good measure. We didn’t waste any time; all we needed to do was to look at each other and we knew we wanted the cookbook. And that’s when we found the other wonder.

A book of assorted stories by Guy de Maupassant. For 20 frigging bucks. In mint condition. A book thicker than my arm (through admittedly, that’s not very hard). I fell in love immediately. I opened my mouth and no sound came out. Urmi had to pay for it, I was so dumbstruck. And just like that, that shitty, shitty day turned into a good day. And I got my first copy of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories.

---Kartikeya

Meet me at the intersection of chic and Shahpur Jat

At Shahpur Jat

I am torn, quite frankly. Torn between wanting to keep this exquisitely not-so-quaint-anymore little hub all to myself; and between telling everyone that I know, as interested in fashion, food, paraphernalia and the general craze of wanting to do something a Sunday afternoon, of this discovery that I made last week. For revelation would entail losing the right to call it my own...but considering this place has been around a while, it probably is a futile dream anyway! This territorial delight that I refer to is the Shahpur Jat Village, tucked away almost as though to hide itself, beyond the busy harrumphing main roads of south Delhi. Just a bus stop away from its more illustrious cousin, Hauz KhasVillage, my current favourite hotspot has in fact been often called “the poor man’s Hauz Khas Village”, a title its owners vociferously try to live down. I found out as much on my most recent (and in fact my first!) trip to its romantic bylanes last Sunday, when I accompanied my boyfriend on one of his news assignments. He was covering the Open House for The Hindu and I was happily, in a furiously busy looking ethnic skirt, tagging along—not the greatest idea as I soon found out, the skirt I mean—for we trailed along gullies, often muddy, that you wonder at existing beyond the Chandni Chowk area of the city.

Me, browsing through the shelves at Bookwise

  It didn’t take us too long to find the place, however pre-disposed Shahpur Jat may seem to be to tucking itself away. Just ask the auto rickshaw-walla to take the sloping narrow road adjacent to the road that leads to the Asiad Village and chances are that you shall find yourself pop at the threshold of a Slice of Italy. This Slice of Italy in fact is the only thing “conventional” about Shahpur Jat Village, as we were soon to discover. Bravely navigating loose tendrils of an extremely stubborn skirt, I hopped and skipped up the place I had never been. It was beautiful. Coloured in streamers and balloons, every shop on both sides of us seemed to scream out to us in gaiety. They truly were embodying the spirit of the Open House that meant to showcase to the general public of Delhi what it had to offer and how much of it Delhi had already missed! 

We began at Bookwise, this quaint shop in wood paneling that the moment you walk in, seems to open out into a wondrous new universe, stretching out to shelves and shelves of—wait for it—not merely books, but so, so much more. There were paper lanterns and coffee mugs and quirkily designed home accessories; even cartoon-faced paperweights (!), and free little bottles of water and cups of hot coffee offered to anyone that walks in. Kartikeya and I had walked bang into the middle of the story-telling session that was the highlight of the day. Little kids piping in outbursts and responses to the story-teller’s questions thrown at them while they sprawled on the mats. When he was done interviewing Aarti Walia, the co-owner of Bookwise, we were immediately guided by her to Anandini’s Tea Boutique — a phenomenon I found surprising. In a vastly competitive shopping world, where store owners mumble directions to neighbouring stores, people at Shahpur Jat seemed more than eager to help us out! If the wonder at such friendliness weren’t enough, Anamika, the owner of Anandini herself was a bundle of brimming warmth and bubbliness. Ushering us in with a million-watt smile, she talked voraciously about her tea-loving origins. On a little table were lined three different kinds of chocolate—all dark—and sprawled next to them judicious instructions as to which type of tea one should eat those chocolates with. Not only did I LOVE the concept of tea with chocolate, something I’d never heard of before, I was also glad she allowed us a sampling—when we finally had a delectable lavender infusion tea with chilli pine nut chocolate!

Olivia Dar

  Of course the shopaholic in me could not stay rooted in one spot and needed to explore the rest of this labyrinthine maze that was Shahpur Jat. Rows after rows of boutiques with dolled up mannequins, in dresses, scarves, stacked high on sky-high stilettos, ankle straps, colours: umber, magenta, lavender, pink—screamed at me ever so insistently. I followed the call (as I had to) all the way to Olivia Dar and Kardo. Olivia Dar, this happy-looking Parisian, with free-flowing curls and in a fitted white ganjee, told us of how she had stationed herself in India ten years ago and had never felt like leaving. I had, meantime already shot off a couple of fashion questions at her that had Kartikeya slightly stupefied, but mostly relieved. How were these clothes a hybrid of French couture and Indian detailing, as her brochure proclaimed? By way of explanation, she simply pointed to rows of collars—those famous collars that Olivia Dar is especially known for. French detachable collars that she has grown up with seeing her beloved grandmother and mother don, and that she has now introduced to India through bright Indian colour schemes and beads and buttons, often glittery gold sequins that the Indian penchant for bling frequently craves. She had thought of it all—and before I could even begin to browse, she had (again, amazingly good-naturedly) directed us to her neighbour, Rikki Kher, who owns Kardo. Kardo, a line of only men’s clothing, looked beautiful when we entered, as all the lines and lines of pastel, blue, white shirts seemed to catch the light and reflect a thousand smithereens of the highest quality fashion. He insisted their motto was to be traditionalist, to get down to basics, to use the finest tailoring, hide their seams (a detail I marveled at), yet made sure we understood he wasn’t conservative in following new trends either.

Rikki Kher

We were almost done. The only thing that was left to be done was—you guessed it—satiate two tremendously hungry stomachs! Of course we visited all the bigger ones which were in a line—Potbelly restaurant and Café R.E.D, among others — but finally decided on a little almost out-of-the-way café called K.T’s, given my penchant for the cozy and private. After having dug into two of the most sumptuous juicy burgers we’d had in a while (a mutton Gunda burger and a Chicken one) we were pleasantly indolent. The afternoon’s labour had given us liberty to just browse and laze now. And in the little time we remained there now, I happily did so. Of course I hadn’t come armed with enough resources to shop—I’d had no idea of what delights this place offered—but now I knew. I was highly reluctant to leave, but leave we did—only with the promise I made to myself, almost squealing and pirouetting on my long-skirted toes—that we’d be back very soon. Perhaps next week. Perhaps sooner. With a vengeance to shop.

The passageway to Cafe R.E.D.

 Shahpur Jat is a must-visit. You will be all kinds and shades of happy. And if you are anything like me, you will be purring with satisfaction, with two strings of scarves and strappy heels slung around your shoulders. Sigh, there I said it.

--- Urmi