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