I am off on my first road trip in India to explore the Kutch district of Gujarat. The first of many more road trips I hope. 🙂 Travel essentials—my canon camera so I can bring back with me some of Kutch’s beauty, my blackberry (yeah, I am not an iPhone/smartphone person 😀 ) so I can SOS if need be, and my notebook to scribble along, jot down conversations, make notes and smileys. Continue reading
Memorial to the first Bishop of Bombay, Right Reverend Thomas Carr at St. Thomas Cathedral; he died in England. His cenotaph was put up at the cathedral by his wife, in his memory.
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In keeping with the spirit of the festive season, I continue my exploration of Mumbai’s churches—from the quaint to the grand this time. 🙂
South Bombay’s two oldest churches can be traced back to the British Raj. Two very different churches representing two very different chapters from this period. They are also two of the most imposing in the city. Whereas St. Thomas Cathedral is a symbol of early British settlement, the Afghan Church is a dedication to the 16,000 soldiers who died in the first Afghan War. Continue reading
“There is no church here. I have never seen one,” the cab driver asserts as I get off on a quiet lane in Malabar Hills, South Bombay. Google Maps begs to differ. I am pretty confused. 🙂
I am looking for a 130-year old Anglican church that I had read about, built during the British Raj for the British Raj. Continue reading
If Bandra’s charm could be codified, I guess this would be it. Cats and silver leaves—collaborative mural by Anpu Varkey (India) and Tika (Switzerland).
So what happens when 20 internationally renowned street artists from all over the world, and two passionate people from Delhi get together and decide to bring the power of art as a medium of creative expression to the streets of India, free and accessible to all? St+art happens.
From the 7th to the 30th, this November, over 30 murals in Mumbai transformed, otherwise drab edifices, into vibrant thought-provoking compositions. Luckily for me, a bulk of them were painted in Bandra, my home in this city. 🙂 Continue reading
Chants, ragas, notes and sweet melodies from wind, percussion and string instruments play almost simultaneously inside the vast interiors of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai. But it is not cacophonic. Rather there is harmony in the eclectic mix. It is more the unusual for me, for it is an effortless amalgamation of technology, music and art, and of the traditional, modern and spiritual, to create a seamless expanse of personal experience. Continue reading
From behind the everyday commuter traffic swarming through the business district of Fort in South Bombay, peeps out an earlier historical Fort, albeit shyly. I have often been part of that sea of humanity, stealing a hungry glance around me every now and then, to revert back to the trudge forward. And then one day, today, I delved deeper and met the old Fort. 🙂 Continue reading
As I push open the massive doors of Chemould Prescott Road, a colossal installation titled ‘Moderniznation’ depicting an aerial view of Bombay greets me. Pieces of car-scrap, aluminum sheets and found objects – materials used in the real built elements – spill over the gallery’s walls and floors. Miniaturized green mosque minarets, white church steeples and orange temple sikharas poke their way out of the sea of trampoline and tin squares. I look a little carefully and a cut out of the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar peeps out. Continue reading
One of my favorite travel images. Taken in Yazd, Central Iran in October 2007.
I was at the Ateshkadeh (Zoroastrian fire temple) in the new city when a group of five young girls placed themselves in front of me. Five girls, with five different personalities. Five different emotions. At the same place, same time, same age, validating the richness of human expression and thought.
Clockwise: The imp, the assured, the serious, the shy, the open laughter.
Fairies taking away the Books
The fantasy-tical world of Shahed Pasha.
It is a world where millennia old Hindu mythological stories are portrayed in modern contexts in miniature painting style, by a born and bred Muslim, across mammoth canvases. Continue reading
A centuries old baobab tree in a Namibian village on the banks of the River Chobe, at the confluence of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.
Africa. It is only those who have traveled to it, who can feel its call.
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