What this blog is about? Me.
Farrokh Jijina was my oldest friend. Not the friend I’d known the longest, but the oldest person to be my friend. We met in what I now know were the last years of his life. I was twenty-something, and Farrokh was comically skittish about revealing his age. He delighted in obfuscating details that offered clues [ ]
The peeling, splotchy walls of Calcutta’s National Economic Restaurant are of such antiquity that it is not in question whether Tagore ever visited for a slice of toast but whether Chandragupta Maurya stopped by for a cup of tea. In 2025, one wizened old customer is humming to himself. At the next table, another is [ ]
I dislike arriving at new places by air – feels more like teleportation than travel – but landing at Dehradun airport charms you with a magnificent first view of the hills. As we fly north, dusty brown plains bloom into verdant fields, which end abruptly…and your eyes shoot ahead to glide over forested foothills rent [ ]
In February 2014, I went on a mostly solo, four-week backpacking trip from Mumbai to Kolkata, Varanasi (Benaras), Lucknow, Harsil (near Gangotri), Mussoorie, Mcleodganj, Delhi, Jodhpur and Udaipur. You can read travelogues from my trip here. I shot random footage of people and places along the way. After coming back, I wrote a script that [ ]
Watching the gleaming coaches of my train disappear down a red laterite valley after depositing me at Thivim Station six hours behind schedule, which, according to Goan Standard Time, is not very late at all. Listening to Prabhakar, my wizened motorcycle pilot, detail the decay of Goan politics and still punctuate every point with “phir [ ]
I write for The City Story, an independent website that documents interesting people, places, experiences and eating options in Mumbai and London. The writing is lucid, placid and devoid of attention-grabbing gimmicks. All stories are either about hidden gems in the metropolis, or urban icons looked at from a novel perspective. Each story is written [ ]
An earnest bachelor travelling on work slides his glasses up his harried nose and attempts to tinker with his laptop while a family of seven corners him in with a teething baby, a farting grandpa, a painfully beautiful daughter, a corpulent son who strips down to his underwear, a family friend playing Antakshari with himself, [ ]
This morning, I conducted a one-person sociological experiment. Instead of falling out of bed and groping my way to a cup of coffee, I stood myself in front of a mirror and shouted, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai!’ Not much happened. My eyes, hitherto closed, fluttered open an angstrom. My ears, bracing for impact, thanked the [ ]
Before I see her, I hear her. No, it is only her stick. Her, I never hear at all. When her battered wooden cane clacks against the old wooden seats, we who are sitting at the front of the first compartment of one of the last locals to Borivali, look up. In the aisle stands [ ]
Think of S. Think of S’s mother. Think of S’s mother’s gaajar ka halwa. Focus on the gaajar ka halwa. Realise that a year has gone by since you last had some. Miss it. Crave it. Realise that it is the only form in which you consume carrots. Remember that carrots are rich in Vitamin [ ]