A museum to utensils from very long ago
How did women manage their kitchens in the old days without an array of electronic gadgets? Find the answer in the Vechaar Utensils Museum in Ahmedabad. It has an educative collection of over 4,500 utensils from India and across the world. Learn a thing or two from the pages of
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Weaving a Raja Ravi Verma painting into a saree
Merging Mahatma Gandhi’s khadi cloth and Raja Ravi Varma’s iconic paintings sounds impossibly radical. But that’s what two textile revivalists, Gaurang Shah and Lavina Baldota, set out to achieve. It took them all of six years to weave intricate paintings into cloth, using the jamdani technique, and create a collection
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Designing clothes people with disability can wear
It requires a lot of weird calisthenics to get dressed when you have disability. You fumble with buttons and zips, sleeves and pants. It’s time consuming, painful and creates a frustrating dependence. So it was for Soumita Basu. Diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, she started losing mobility from 2010 and by
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Escape to another world in Kochi
WHEN you are fleeing the noxious air and grim life during winter in Delhi and its surroundings, where should you go for a complete reset? Just about any place at a safe distance would be fine. If you are okay with a three-hour flight, you could try Kochi for the
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In a Goan village, happily
When I first moved from the cemented chaos of Mumbai to a tiny red mud house in the Goan village of Benaulim, I signed up for peace, palm trees, and the slow, poetic hum of the sea. My house, on rent with the lease renewed recently, has a storybook aura
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Students in Mysuru are keeping its past alive with walks
If you find yourself in Mysuru with its wondrous palaces and buildings, take a walk through the city with a bunch of smart students from the Wadiyar Centre for Architecture (WCFA). The students offer two walks, Memories of the Land and Bazaars of Mysore as well as a cycling tour,
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The heritage menu
In the comfort of your home, you can savour meals from around the globe — picking whatever your heart desires. The options are many: low-calorie, protein-rich, keto, vegan, paleo. And yet it is the home-style meal that is unobtrusively winning the battle for taste buds. Nourishing, nostalgic, slow-cooked and aromatic.
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Raghav to Ron: The incurable longing to be White
I met Joe in the British city of Birmingham — a confident young Sikh with neatly cropped hair, stylish trainers, and a quick grin. “My friends prefer to call me Joe,” he told me, explaining that his full name was Joginder Singh, but it sounded “too heavy” in local circles.
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Learning to embrace the moment
Buddhist mindfulness meditation is catching on in a big way amongst the young, hooked on technology, and the old in their sunset years. Popularized in the West by the late Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, mindfulness meditation hinges on focused awareness of the present moment. There is no past
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A farewell monsoon tryst in the Western Ghats of Goa
There are days when you find yourself waiting behind closed doors, as the sky murmurs in a way only the heart can truly hear — a melange of wonder and wild beauty. That’s when you know an adventure beckons. It was then that a message arrived in the inbox, a
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Inside Kolkata’s Chinatown
On a sultry Sunday morning, eight of us gathered at the Metro’s Central Station gate to embark on a walk to Kolkata’s famed Chinatown. We trooped down Sun Yat Sen Road behind our guide. He remarked in passing that the esteemed Sun Yat Sen was the equivalent of Mahatma Gandhi
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Bengal’s dolls and grandma’s love
Across districts, artisans keep Bengal’s tradition of doll-making alive using jute, clay, cloth, wood and their own ingenuity to recreate dolls in a more contemporary setting. Step into an old Bengali home and you might still spot a terracotta horse or elephant adorning the house. These earthy dolls made of clay
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In Goa, there is a better life for those who seek it
Picture this. Waking up in the morning, pulling back the curtains, opening the double doors, and looking into fallow rice fields. Closer to the doors are waving coconut fronds, a betel nut palm, and other trees in the distance. In the rice fields, buffaloes graze, and white and black egrets
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Facelift for a historic cemetery
CITIES don’t know to stand still. So where should one discover their past? Graveyards are a good place to go, ask Mudar Patherya, Kolkata’s very own heritage activist. Patherya has been restoring tombstones in the South Park Street Cemetery where a chunk of Kolkata’s history, dating back to 1767, can
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Artists choose artists
ON a breezy evening we arrived in a 1930s Kolkata home in Ballygunge which has belonged to curator-writer Aveek Sen and his family for generations. French-louvre windows lined the corridor and a flight of stairs led us to a board lit up with the word Experimenter. We were here for
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When it is time for a reset, try the Vaidyagrama retreat
IT’s a varied group of people from across the world who find their way to Thirumalayampalayam, a dusty hamlet in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. Each of them is looking for something to energize body and mind — lift them from the trough into which they have slipped. There
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Clothes piling up? Pass them on
WHEN Vineet Mehrotra lost his father in the Covid-19 pandemic, he grappled with intense grief. Adding to his depression was the overwhelming amount of decluttering he was confronted with, as his father’s only caretaker. A month later, Mehrotra couldn’t put it off any longer. He began sorting out the piles
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‘Raising funds is a thankless task’
Philanthropy has a special buzz among the ultra-rich. If net worth matters, so does how much is given away. But who to give to and for what? Should it be an instinctive decision or a calibrated one? These are vexing concerns. Entire teams in large foundations work on vetting proposals,
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Take a walk into Delhi’s fabulous water rich past
ON a cold and foggy winter morning we found ourselves amidst a quiet, serene and ancient compound in New Delhi’s R.K. Puram with tombs on one side and a stepwell on the other. We were on a heritage walk to the Munirka Baoli. Our enthusiastic group consisted of two retired
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How to choose a toothbrush
ONCE a day, if not twice, at an hour when you aren’t necessarily at your best, a toothbrush does your sleepy bidding. In the few minutes that you give to this personal ritual, gums and teeth and tongue get a scrubbing. For the intimate task that your toothbrush performs, as
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Toy Bank has been growing up
A little girl who came from an abusive household would bang her head against the wall when she came to school. She wouldn’t join activities with other children. To help her, teachers gave her puzzles to work on. The little girl would sit alone in a corner and piece them
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Three Waters, the Goan non-hotel
IT is a villa with just seven rooms, but in its location, architecture and aura it offers a whole world of experiences. For the immersive traveller, it is a trapdoor to the traditional Goan way of life far removed from mindless tourists, messy beaches, loud parties and extortionist taxi drivers.
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Good jaggery: When searching remember dark is better
All talk about white sugar begins and ends with getting off it. But gur or jaggery, no less sweet and laden with calories than white sugar, has got a formidable reputation for being wholesome. Traditionally used in Indian households in desserts or just to nibble on after a meal, gur now also has a
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Everyday meals at Kolkata’s Dacres Lane
An office break. Sprawling sustenance. Kind invitations of “Didi, bhaat khaabe?” from silver-haired vendors. Wafting aromas and the clatter of cooking and serving. When you are in the thick of Dacres Lane, you couldn’t be anywhere else. “Jaise Mumbai ka Chowpatty, Dilli ka Sarojini, waise hi Kolkata ka Dacres Lane bahut famous
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A Pandyan meal to perfection
As I stepped into Suvaii restaurant, I noted it had the warmth and ambience of a typical elegant Madurai Chettinad home. This set the stage for an unforgettable dining experience of Pandyan cuisine. As I made my way through Suvaii’s sparsely decorated interiors, I was welcomed by framed art gracing
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Done with your meds? You can pass them on to others
Decluttering is the order of the day. Clothes, books, shoes, cosmetics, crockery and such like are relatively easy to give away. But what about those medicines that one no longer needs and haven’t expired? What does one do with them? Putting them in the trash is a waste and passing
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Finger on the pulse: When a vaidya comes home
Recently, I had the opportunity of organizing a one-off outpatient consultation event in Delhi for an Ayurvedic hospital based near Coimbatore. I thought facilitating the healing journey of other suffering souls would be a good gesture. So, I co-opted Dr A.R. Ramdas, my vaidya from Vaidyagrama, the healing village in Thirumalayampalayam that
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Cartoonist serves coffee with art in Kolkata kiosk
THE coffee is cheap, the art is free. As you exit from Gate No. 1 of the Tollygunge Metro Station in Kolkata, you come face to face with a typical stall, the likes of which vend tea, coffee, biscuits and maybe some more light eats. The difference is that in
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Some native landscaping in Delhi with a 100-plant guide
AS cities expand, they desperately need greening to save them from being concrete jungles. But what kind of greening should it be? Decades of growing just about anything, often merely because it looks good or has been passed down over the years, has resulted in costly ecological confusions. Why should plants
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Get the drift: The saga of Bengal’s ancient boats
Every river has its own distinctive current, wave pattern, wind and tides. And rivers mean boats which predate the wheel, says anthropologist Swarup Bhattacharyya who has spent the better part of his academic life pursuing the saga of the boats of Bengal. If you wish to study the evolution of
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Col Gill brings back a forest to save a river in Ludhiana
TREES disappear in twos and threes. Entire forests vanish. Public land gets encroached on. Human wastes and chemicals get dumped in water bodies. What can you do about such ugly transgressions even as they sully your life? Precious little, you might say. Cleaning up after others isn’t easy. There is
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Joy of birding: Walks for children from Early Bird
BIRDS make the world go round. But where in the hurly-burly of cities should some joyous birdwatching begin? Try your balcony or the tree across the street or the neighbourhood park. Birds wait to be discovered everywhere. Better still, check out Varsha Sridhar’s Early Bird, which is part of the
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Puppets wait for their museum in Kasaragod
ONE hundred puppets from the Epics are waiting patiently for their museum to open. Their creator, 58-year-old Ramesh K.V., master Yakshagana puppeteer, has run out of money. The museum is his labour of love and has, so far, been financed with savings and loans. The building is up in the
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Two-bit dessert: In search of the healthy sweet
NO meal is ever complete without something sweet to round it off. But what should it be? On a leisurely day, after a sumptuous repast and plenty of time to spare, the spirit is weak and the longing for dessert could lead to all kinds of excess from gulab jamuns to ice-cream
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Going back to Vaidyagrama for that healing feeling
REVISITING the experience of a lifetime is fraught with uncertainties. Will it be as good? Can it be better? What if it is a let-down? So it was with me as I headed back to Vaidyagrama, an idyllic village of vaidyas or Ayurveda physicians nestled among trees in the quietly imposing Nilgiri
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Out of whack? Try Praana
USHER peace and spirituality into your home with Praana’s range of soy candles, essential oils, diffusers and roll-ons. Started by graphic designer Peali Dutta Gupta during the trying days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Praana’s mission is to help people achieve a state of mindfulness and calm. “Each essential oil has certain qualities.
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Going all green in transit in Bengaluru
THE first sight that struck me as I entered the swanky Terminal 2 of Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) were the green vertical walls around the terminal with hanging gardens cascading from the terminal roof on bells and veils suspended from the ceiling. Filled with lush greenery, the airport provides
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Craft as child’s play with Potli
THE wondrous world of Indian craft with its colours and intricacies is rarely introduced to children at an early age. The reasons are understandable. India’s numerous crafts are out of reach for children and parents. Patua art is from West Bengal, Aipan from Uttarakhand and Madhubani from Bihar. To see
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Inside Kasaragod caves: Visiting the unique suranga
THE coastal town of Kasaragod is gradually realizing its tourist potential. True, it doesn’t have the Taj Mahal or the Hawa Mahal. But it has the unique suranga, a narrow cave dug inside a hill which yields crystal-clear water. The suranga, a traditional water-harvesting structure, is an engineering feat. Kasaragod
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Serenading a visiting owl
A MAGICAL thing happened on the night of October 3. I got a call from a neighbour that there was an owl outside her door. It had not moved for a couple of hours and she thought it might be injured. Could I help? I had absolutely no idea what
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Try some insect cookies they are good for you
A cookie packed with protein, chocolate and crickets is creating a buzz in culinary circles. It has been developed by a team at the Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment (ATREE), an NGO based in Bengaluru. The idea, say team members, is to start a conversation around
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Toys you can trust: Eco-friendly creations on offer
THE landscape for toys is changing rapidly. A number of e-commerce sites invent and sell toys and games that are educative, fun, easy to handle and tuned to early childhood learning. What’s more, the new toys are eco-friendly and made of biodegradable material, unlike mainstream options made of plastic. Attractive
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Eating from a forest: Vanvadi becomes a dream come true
AS summer peters out and the monsoon sets in, the Sahyadari mountains in the Western Ghats brim over with forest foods. There are vegetables, fruits, vines and tubers that are endemic to these ranges and local people relish them. At Vanvadi, a forest we have regenerated over 28 years in
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Beware the fad diet online! It could be killing you
A tall and strapping man since his youth, nothing about CB was even remotely frail — not until recently when a stringent diet meant to bring his diabetes under control reduced him to skin and bones in a matter of months. The diet made him obsessive about his food, sent
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Other India Book Store finally calls it a day
IMAGINE a bookstore run like a mini Amazon.com, long before the latter was even thought of. The Other India Book Store (OIBS) used the mail-order approach, and very successfully, a decade before Jeff Bezos famously began operations out of his garage in the US in 1994. Sadly, in March this
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My cousin’s electric car and how it went to Mussoorie
WHEN Abhinav Bainslay found it was time to junk his old car, he and his wife, Aarti, went through days of indecision over what to buy. They wondered whether to just play safe and choose another petrol/diesel car or be bold and make the switch to an electric vehicle (EV). After
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Don’t let dead batteries haunt the world
CHANCES are that expended pencil batteries have been collecting in your drawer and every time you think of sending them off with your kitchen waste in a garbage bag, you hold yourself back because you are aware that it is not the correct thing to do. The pencil battery pile-up
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This winter get your mango fix from Ratnagiri
THE big problem for fruit-growers is what to do with their perishable produce if they can’t find buyers during the season. One way out is to turn the remainder of the crop into pulp, and bottle and tin it. This way it can be sold all over the country year-round.
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A Sunday with bees: Beekeeper shares his world
YOU may have heard of bees migrating with the changing seasons but a person migrating with his bees is surely a rare occurrence. Rakesh Gupta, a 62-year-old beekeeper from Lucknow, travels with his beehive-boxes across India. He migrates with them to orchards in Kashmir, the coasts of Gujarat, the high
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Don’t sell an old machine, better to just recycle it
DO you know where your PC and its monitor went when you dumped them after they couldn’t be cranked up anymore? Or what finally happened to that heavy laptop that you junked after long years of use to make way for a new featherlight version? Or who took away that
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A fitting farewell with the Noble Sparrows
SUNK in grief after losing their loved ones to COVID-19, many families had to undergo the painful process of performing the last rites in stultifying circumstances. Crematoriums in India are in abysmal conditions and there is also cumbersome paperwork to be done. At a time of grief, one is left
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Up close, safe and customized
IS your skin too sensitive for just any soap? Does your curly hair need something special to shampoo with? Are you choosy about the face mask you use? Are you worried that your hand cream has too many chemicals in it? You probably are and like a growing number of
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Watch out for Wild Wild Women of hip hop
IN the midst of graffitied walls in Andheri East in Mumbai, seven women found a common beat to vibe to at an all-women’s cypher, coordinated on a WhatsApp group, and “just gave it a shot”. Now they hang together as Wild Wild Women, turning that initial bolt of raw energy
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Great fruit wine with those Himachali roots
FRUIT wines have their own charm, especially if they come from Himachal Pradesh and are made from the wonderful fruits grown in the upper reaches of the mountains there. Even better if the traditional ways of making wine in Himachali homes are followed. So, if you come across a brand
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Innocent jam with heart from artisanal efforts
WHEN your boyfriend’s mother puts effort and love into making delicious jams and chutneys the family adores, what do you do to show your appreciation for her efforts? Simple: you cobble together a business, dream up a brand and begin selling the lovely homemade stuff so that more people get
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When apricots arrive from heaven in an SUV
They are small, juicy, sweet, bright orange in colour and very nutritious. The kind of goodness that is packed into Halman apricots is such that you couldn’t possibly ask for more. They truly seem to be made in heaven. As the lockdown eased in Delhi and Gurugram and everyone struggled to
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Camel milk anyone? It’s out on shelves
Monisha Ashokan recalls that if she didn’t like eating breakfast before dashing off to school, her mother would insist that she have at least a glass of milk. Ashokan is now a nutritionist and co-founder of NourishMe, a wellness centre in Delhi. She would still recommend a glass of milk
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Comedians readily go online with a laugh
You can’t shut up a stand-up comedian. Faced with cancelled shows and a grim future, this creative tribe has found a way to reinvent itself during the lockdown. Without much fanfare they resurfaced on the digital medium. Zoom is their chosen platform and they are doing what they do best —
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Will the Kunbi weave survive?
Babu rao Babaji Tilve’s face lights up as he takes down the tarpaulin covering his loom and weaving tools. “I closed this loom down in 2015. A mild paralytic stroke weakened my legs, otherwise I would have gladly continued to weave till my last breath. This is the sacred legacy
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Pirates, camels, parrots in Raghubir Nagar
Raghubir Nagar, a low-income settlement of about 900 jhuggis in West Delhi, is an eye-catching sight. The walls and doors of homes in the basti have been painted with bright murals of birds, faces and silhouettes. From across the street, the basti looks astonishing. The murals have been done by Delhi Street Art, which was founded by
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Art meets social change at Khoj
In 1997, Khoj International Artists’ Association began as an annual workshop with local and international artists with the intention of promoting experimental and unconventional art. Khoj now has a beautiful office space in Khirki in south Delhi. It supports artists by offering them a creative space where they can practise
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Alternative bookstore holds its own in Goa
The Other India Bookstore (OIB) at Mapusa in Goa is unlike any other bookshop. Lined with books from the floor till the ceiling, it houses unheard of books. This well-curated bookstore is the brainchild of Claude and Norma Alvares, a very reputed environment activist couple in Goa. It was started
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Weaving history and carpets in Mirzapur
The oldest hub of carpet weaving in India is Mirzapur in Bhadohi district of Uttar Pradesh. The Ganga flows past this town with its ghats, ancient temples and waterfalls. But I am here to understand the process of making intricate rugs and carpets for which Mirzapur is famous. The genesis of
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Aisi Taisi races against reality
The big challenge before India’s standup comedians, as Varun Grover says in a promotional video for Aisi Taisi Democracy (ATD), is the fast-shrinking gap between satire and reality. “Satire is in direct competition with reality these days,” the Hindi film lyricist quips. “Hum do haftaa soch ke koi joke likhte hain, pata chalta hai
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A nursery for a Sunday bazaar
When Arjun Sahani, a mountaineer, found farmers growing crops organically in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh, he started a company called Nature’s Soul with the idea of selling their produce in cities. It didn’t work out quite as he had envisioned and he took to outsourcing organic agriculture to
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Shaadi bands to maestros in music museum
The Indian Music Experience (IME), India’s only high-tech interactive music museum, is Bengaluru’s latest cultural hub. Sprawled across 50,000 square feet, the museum is an encyclopedia of Indian music, presented in an engaging manner for audiences young and old. It has nine interactive exhibition galleries, a Sound Garden with 10
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At Sunder Nursery, history and nature come together
New Delhi now has a vast green space in the middle of the city with resplendent trees, a sparkling lake, 15 historical monuments, a nursery, an arboretum and wildlife. This expanse of 90 acres is part of the Humayun’s Tomb complex. Known as Sunder Nursery, the park was built by
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A survey of Goa’s unique old houses
GOA is practically littered with mesmerizing houses and government buildings that hark back to 450 years of colonial rule. So great was the dominance of western architecture in shaping urban and, to some extent, rural landscape that local architecture was completely overwhelmed. But thanks to the efforts of the Goa
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Skydiving to Kambla to skiing and more
About 100 eye-catching pictures were displayed at an exhibition on ‘The Great Outdoors’ at Karnataka Chitrakal Parishath in Bengaluru over December 10-12. Organised by Essen Communications and Karnataka Tourism, the photographs depicted the thrill of adventure sports and offbeat journeys of land, water and sky in India and abroad. The
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With solar and LED vaastu home can be hi-tech too
As I stepped into Sankrithi, the dream home of Shivakumar, an entrepreneur in Bengaluru, I was struck by the feeling of space, light and positivity all around. Tucked away in the lanes of Basavangudi, a laidback suburb and an erstwhile vegetarian Brahmin stronghold, the house is a breath of fresh
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Magic Men of Mayong
The ‘magical’ place is only a 40-km drive from Guwahati, but few youngsters in the capital city of Assam, hooked as they are to the fictional tales of Harry Potter and his Hogwarts School of Wizardry, have any idea of its existence. Mayong – the name is believed to have
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Sifting fact from fiction
PEGGY Mohan’s second novel, The Youngest Suspect, is a fictionalized account of what happens when young Muslim boys are brutalized into confessing to terrorist crimes they did not commit. It is a novel on the aftermath of the 2002 Godhra riots in Gujarat, ‘an indictment of sorts of the Modi
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At home with the Pintos: no rush, just being together
No map pins, no star ratings, no influencer videos — yet the old-charm bars of Benaulim reveal themselves to those who seek them patiently, off the beaten track. These bars exist in another Goa — tucked between swaying palms, lanes painted in pastel hues, and the soft village breeze carrying
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