Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
What luxury means in 2021
If you ask your mother or grandmother what their idea of luxury is, you will probably get an answer that’s a variation of one of these: “A double ikat Patan patola.” “A diamond addigai (necklace).” “A Kashmiri silk carpet or a shahtoosh.” “A Mughal miniature painting. Or a Srinathji pichwai.” “Listening to Sawai Gandharva on a full-moon night on the banks of the Ganga.” Indians of earlier generations know luxury in a visceral, sensual way. Every product I have mentioned above is hyper-localised, linked to region, personal history and provenance. Often, each of these luxury objects is made by an artist or craftsperson who has worked with the family to custom specifications. It is purchased for a high price by an aesthete who has been following the sector for generations. If that isn’t luxury shopping, what is?
Rara Avis, Black Swans, and Hornbills
For Indian birders, hornbills are the rara avis. Or maybe not, depending on where you live. If you live in the Northeast or the Western Ghats, you will see hornbills. Sitting in Bangalore, it is rare. The term rara avis is linked to the Black Swan. The expression comes from the Roman satirist Juvenal, 'Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno [A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan]. I interviewed Dr. Aparajita Datta about hornbills for the Bird Podcast. Listen to it here.
Growing up Karanth: book review: for Hindustan Times
Why do we read a biography? Often, because we want to get to know greatness. We are drawn to charismatic compelling figures and we want to know the ‘real person’ behind the public persona. By this measure, Growing up Karanth delivers in full measure. It takes us inside the life and mind of the Karanth family. It shows us how they lived, the kinds of food they ate, the animals they kept, and the connections they fostered.
Tabasco’s Temptation/Fresh magazine
I wrote about the allure of Tabasco for Fresh magazine. It is a personal essay with a long narrative arc. When all else fails, I reach for Tabasco. It’s my go-to condiment, as comforting to me as a child’s blanket, as dependable as New England’s four seasons, as fierce as the women in my family—my mother, my grandmother, and my many aunts—whose cooking I longed for when I arrived at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from India as a young undergraduate in the late ’80s.At school and out of my element, I missed the stews my mother would cook on her outdoor stove under the moonlight, the dishes that teemed with the rich scents and spicy flavors of my native South India. In comparison, the cafeteria food was bland and arrived like clockwork: Pasta on Mondays, ratatouille on Tuesdays, burgers on Wednesdays, pizza on Fridays, and so on. I yearned for the fiery green chilies that flavored the curries back home. I needed some fire and spice—and that bottle of cafeteria mustard was no substitute.
Using Twitter/ Nieman Storyboard
For a writer, being successful on Twitter, accumulating followers, is a particular skill that has more to do with showmanship than writing. Provocative, controversial and funny content attracts followers. Can you do that? Writing click-bait type tweets that offer headline-like copy helps. Can you do that? Keeping a steady cadence of content is key. You have to keep putting stuff out there. Some folks tweet four times a day. Can you do that? It involves being comfortable with what skeptics call “oversharing,” and stopping the censor in your head that says “nobody cares about your every inane thought.” Can you stop that censor? Read my take on how journalists use Twitter.
About Rajat Parr/Sommelier India
The unbridled pleasure of orange wine If you ask wine writers or sommeliers to pick a wine that goes well with Indian food, you get a few-- somewhat trite, tried and, one must add, tired-- answers. “Pick a beer,” is what many will say. The logic is that spicy Indian food will overpower delicate wines. Most sommeliers will choose white wines over red. If they choose red, it would be medium-bodied slightly spicy wines over others. Ask wine directors at fancy Indian restaurants in Europe and the UK and their responses will have a thread but also reflect their personal [...]
Emojis/Hindustan Times
This was a fun piece to write. Inspired by a man I know who uses emojis in a cute, funny way. The one covering the face with the hand for instance. There are all these facial exercises going around. Maybe we just imitate emojis? Or better yet, meet in person and actually emote.
Jonathan Franzen interview
In which I interview Jonathan Franzen about his birding journey. Click here to listen to the interview for the Bird Podcast Read more about his birding adventures by listening to it on anywhere podcasts are-- Stitcher, Google or Apple podcasts.
Moral policing/Hindustan Times.
At the end of the day, it is a bad-news story, but like much in this contradictory country of ours, it is also a good-news story. The only way that this particular moral policing story is different from the countless others that are sprouting up all over India is that it is a social media phenomenon
Indian fermented pickles
How many times have you shelled out Rs. 300 for a bottle of kombucha and wondered why there was no Indian equivalent? Where were all the gut-friendly, probiotic fermented drinks (and foods) in Indian cuisine? Of course, there are. As with anything in India, every state has its own variations. In this piece, I write about Rajasthani Kanji and Karnataka's Karindi.