Pottering around the city: St+Art Festival in Photos

On Valentine's Day, the Good Thing and I decided to get out of the house and go do Cultural Shit. This time of the year, there's lots of fun things to do in our vast and sprawling city, and we chose two: a curated walk around Okhla's shipping container yard transformed into a street art show by St+Art (Details here, definitely choose the walk option because they go into a lot of detail about each piece which you might otherwise miss.) 

At the end of the walk, some Young Folks from some performance poetry group put up some spoken word which was pretty terrible as spoken word tends to be more often than not, unless you're a genius, and not a Very Angry Nineteen Year Old, but it was a nice day, so we watched them for a bit, and after a while got drawn into their enthusiasm for their Causes. 

After, we went to the U/A festival organised by OML, which had such terrible signage that we wound up walking round and round in circles for an hour around the venue before we realised it was the first gate we passed after all. (D'oh.) Which was quite fun, but also, eh. It was meant to be "family friendly" and we were afraid at first we'd run into a thousand screaming children, but it was mostly couples and groups in their twenties. My friends were in the "immersive theatre" thing called the Magical Floating Market, where everyone stays in character and is a little like fairyland, and that was the best part. Oh, plus I decided what I really need is a ukelele. (I realise this might need some clarification: the festival was basically a space where you could do a bunch of things from take workshops in solar car making (mine was rubbish, but the Good Thing's actually ran) to ukelele playing or walk through The Floating Market, or listen to music or whatever.) 

Anyway, I took loads of photos at the street art festival, and decided to make them all into one post. For people interested in specs: shot on my One Plus One, edited on Snapseed for colour correction and contrast. 

Life In Instagram Part Three

Previously in this series: Life In Instagram, and Life In Instagram Part Two

Death, doom and disaster everywhere I look today, so I'm taking deep breaths and reliving the past with some pretty pictures. Here's what I've been up to! (TRAVEL. BOOKS. CATS.)


I've been travelling like someone who travels for work, and it has been amazing. We don't have that much spare cash, but what we do, we spend on travelling, with not so much back in Delhi. Who needs a new dress when you can have NEW VIEWS, right, RIGHT? (In fact, I'm off to Goa tomorrow, and I haven't visited in over a year, so I'm such an enthu cutlet, my bag is already packed and zipped and ready to go.)

 

First, we went to Gulmarg again, which was a complete winter wonderland this time. The last time I skiied, there was barely any snow, so I had to work with one little teeny tiny patch. This time there was so much snow that my feet sunk into the ground. Amazing.  I took along wellies that my last ex's mum gave me, which barely get any use here in Delhi and they were perfect winter shoes. 

We stayed at the Nedou's like last time, which was cozy and warm, even if the food was a bit same-ish. I recommend it highly though, the service is fantastic, the hotel is warm with hot running water, and it's super pretty.

 

I made my first snowman! The Good Thing and I burbled "Do you want to build a snowmaaaan?" at each other and wound up with this weird snow troll (?) creature. I was quite proud of it, and so I licked his ear, just so a bit of my DNA would stay on him even if he melted or whatever. 

The only thing I didn't like about Gulmarg and Kashmir was how much everyone tried to scam you of your money. I get that it's a rich people's destination, but we were on a fixed budget, and I grew super tired of arguing with people who charged you double, quadruple normal rates just because they could. I finally blew a fuse at the airport on the way home when the taxi driver demanded more money because he took a detour (on his suggestion, because of a jam, with no mention of this extra money then.) I told him people had been trying to cheat me since I landed, and all anyone cared about was money, money, MONEY, and I might have got a bit emotional, but he grumbled and drove off anyway. Oh well. It felt good to rant.

 

Meet Pablo Squishton Escofur/Purruda/Picatto. This is yes, yes, a foster kitten, who I grew so attached to, I begged the Good Thing to let him be a Valentine's Day present, a decision I regret every morning, which is when Squishy (Pablo when he's older) is at his WORST, scratching everything, dancing around like a monkey and generally being the opposite of me, a slow starting morning person at the best of times. I love him when he's curled up asleep or just about getting to drowsiness, his throat throbbing with purrs, but OMG HE WOKE ME UP AT 8 BLOODY AM AND I KNOW HE'LL OUTGROW THIS BUT I AM FULL OF BLOOD AND SCARS. Little rascal. 

 

I have been reading SO MUCH, thanks to a book fair haul, and Aleph/Rupa sending me review books (more on those later, still reading!) This is one of my favourites and I wish I had read it when I was reviewing food for a living a few years ago. This is REAL food writing, not just "we went there and we ate this" and I wish all the Indian food review places would take a few tips. If you're at all interested in food or writing about it, read this immediately. 

Achievement unlocked! I was asked to speak at a panel discussion at LSR! I felt very old especially because of the fresh faced young things gazing up at me, but I did manage to keep it together enough to take this photo in front of the cafe, now always a "cafe" because there's a sign up to let people know "it's NOT a CANTEEN."

I also went off to Pushkar, but looking through my photos I have SO MUCH to say that I'm going to save it for another post. That's my life. How's yours?

The Great Indian Rail Yatra Part One: Varanasi (SUPER LONG PHOTO ESSAY!)

This December, the Good Thing and I decided to go on an "adventurous" winter vacation. We would take a train across North India, see a few sights, and then catch a train from Jhansi all the way to Goa. We--well, I--called this our Great Indian Rail Yatra. It was going to be EPIC.  We booked all our journeys about two months in advance, but nothing was confirmed by the time we were ready to go. Probably a good thing, because at the last minute, we ditched our Goa plans to go off to Gulmarg and learn how to ski (but that is a story for another post.)

Our journey was still somewhat epic, but in the totally miserable, everyone is stuck on a train for a thousand hours variety. Here, for your viewing pleasure, photos! And please don't travel by train in North India in the foggy months. We learned that the hard way.

Benares.

We stayed at the Holy Ganges View, which we thought was the same as the Ganges View, which is very posh and much more expensive. However, despite being a budget hotel, the Holy Ganges View is clean, warm, and fairly centrally located.

I got my coffee fix at the Open Hand Cafe and the identical menu rip-off Mark Cafe opposite.

Pretty good firang type meals all over Assi Ghaat, but also had great street food just by stopping anywhere there was a kadhai and a throng of people. 

 

So, we've lost a day in Benares thanks to the late train, and as soon as we wake up the next day, we make our way to a sign that says, "Green Lassi" and get ourselves very mildly baked. After this, we are, of course, HIGHLY suggestible, so when a man attaches himself to us, we don't even have the wherewithal to shoo him away. Instead, he hounds us into a sari shop where I almost spend three grand on a synthetic sari which was very ugly in retrospect, and then, to up his guide chops, takes us to some random temple, not even famous or anything, where there is this cement skull, which we spend some time giggling over. Bhaang is fun.

 

The highlight of this trip was meeting this baby goat. I asked the man who had her what her name was and he said, "Chanchan" and everyone laughed and the Good Thing and I have been checking out baby goats so we can have one at home also called Chanchan. (Note: this has not stopped me from eating mutton. Mutton and Chanchan are two different things.) Can goats be litter trained?

 

So this dude took us to a chaat place, but mostly because I said, "I want to go to a chaat place." (He's also been calling the Good Thing ever since, but I think that's because he thinks we're reliable suckers.) 

 

Walking through the alleys of Benares. My stoned-ness had worn off by this point, so I felt a lot less loving.

 

More alleys. At this point I'm like, "LALALALACOLDNOW CAN WE GO HOME." But we can't go home, because we're taking a boat ride, dammit! As one does in Benares.

The Good Thing was totally Puppy Baba, if such a Baba existed. All the little strays flocked to him. My heart broke in teeny tiny pieces.

More lanes and colour and shit. India! Colour!

 

Here's the mighty Ganga, looking deceptively unfoggy, but HOLY SHITBALLS WAS IT COLD 

 

Guide/hanger on on left with Boat Mafia Guy on right negotiating prices. Want to guess how much over market price we paid? BENARES YOUR LASSIS ARE PART OF THE SCAM.

 

Row row row your boat gently down the STREAM OF DEATH.

Whee! Ghats! 

 

 

Whee! Tanks!

 

Whee! Cremations! (Another dude got into the boat to ask for money at this point. I managed to shoo him away.) (UGH THE WORST PART ABOUT TRAVELLING IN TOURIST TOWN INDIA IS EVERYONE ASKING FOR MONEY ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. Normally, I am saved because brown = cheap, but the Good Thing-and-Me combination must've broken all those rules.) 

Sunset aartis were not ruined by all the touts, however.
 

 

Also, I liked the carvings and shit. This is the next day. We went for a long walk and I found my lost temper and was happy for it.

 

But obviously the puppies won the day.

 
Old school windows are every amateur photographer's dream.

 

Boys playing pithoo around an old temple.

And back to the station! Merry Christmas, all! This is how we spent it--in deep despairing fog.

What Ladakh Was Like (Part One)

You ask me why I dwell in the green moun­tain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

-Li Bai, Green Mountain

I've been back in Delhi for long enough to nearly forget Ladakh now. It stays only in the sprinkle of dried apples and sundried tomatoes in my fridge, almost used up. It stays as a string of prayer flags tied to the posts of my bed, but mostly, Ladakh as a feeling is leaving me. Now when someone asks, "What was Ladakh like?" I have my stock answer: "Amazing!" but I feel like they're expecting me to say amazing, the same way I feel the word "amazing" so inadequate, so trite, just bubbling to the front of my mouth. 

When I first moved to Bombay, I asked locals, "Do you ever not look at the sea? Does it become a blind spot?" and they said, "Well, the sea is the sea." When I got off my plane in Ladakh--throat fluttering, lungs heaving, air air air, we must have air!--I turned around to look at the mountains we were surrounded by, and wondered the same thing. 

See a mountain, climb it up, and all the year, you'll have good luck.

***

This is the first holiday I've taken with a girl friend since the Good Thing and I got together. He is away in London, where I cannot afford to go. My friend loans me money for a ticket to Ladakh, she

makes a packing list for us, and hunts out her old backpack and raincoat for me to use. I feel cossetted, like a child, with someone else in charge. We are independent women! We are strong! We feel a surge of self righteousness when we see little groups of families travelling, all of them turning their heads round and staring, STARING, until it feels like my eyes are full of curses from them, and I spit after them in my head, "FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF ALL OF YOU!" Maybe they could sense our smugness, our "we're so much better than you because we're cool and on holiday alone, and you are stuck behind your large family, where the ladies where salwar kameezes and woolen socks under chappals, and your dad is paunchy and has his monkey cap pulled so high it looks like a little nipple on top of his head." My family was never much for holidays that didn't involve going South. We went to Kerala and Hyderabad. Sometimes we had day trips from those two places. We went to Sri Lanka a few times, and everyone had fought with everyone else by the end of it.  Travel seems to me to be an exclusive pleasure, particular to me in my adult life, and not something I share with family or most people.

*** 

 

The food is almost universally, abysmally bad. I am surprised I have such a strong reaction to it. I nearly want to cry after a rafting journey of 20 kilometres when the food greeting me at the other end is insipid saltless daal and rice. In Nubra Valley, there is more daal and rice, in Pangong, where it is so lovely, so lovely, and so breathtakingly cold, there is a different kind of daal, and rice. The man who cooks it listens to my objections about daal and rice ("Please make something different.") and twinkles at me and ignores it. "Couldn't have been too bad," said my friend, a vegetarian for whom daal and rice epitomises comfort, "You had two helpings." "I was still hungry," I told her, leaving out the fact that satiating hunger is very different from actually eating tasty food. Eating to get full leaves you with a craving in the very centre of you, you feel full but unsatisfied.

Finally, I throw myself upon all Leh city, with all its cosmopolitan small town-ness can offer me. There is a hotel called Wonderland up the road from lovely Chow's Guest House, where we are staying. Wonderland does everything, and does it well. We eat pizza and momos, rogaan josh and rice, all not the best food in the world, you understand, but it beats daal and rice.  Another place pulls out their liquor license just before we leave--Bon Appetit--and serves up gorgeous hot chai cocktails--with delicate pizza and pasta, and the views are excellent. I would have gone to Bon Appetit all the time if I could've. 

On the same rafting trip which we are sharing with a couple on holiday away from their child, and a young man who broke free from his package tour, the couple pulls out vodka on a surprisingly calm river, we do shots, and eat the packaged namkeen my friend has passed around. We stop for fifteen minutes on a sandy bank, and smoke cigarettes which the rafting instructor packs away into an empty box. On the way back to the city, they--vegetarians all, except me---discuss how "disgusting" meat is, and I silently long for a mutton biryani. 

***

How confidently the driver handles the vertiginous roads. We do like the foreigners do, and keep an eye out for people wanting to share a taxi. Within minutes, we have answered a neon poster's call, and have rides booked for Nubra Valley and Pangong. The drive to Nubra--first things first--is terrible, six hours of jouncing about in the back seat of a car missing shock absorbers. The only one who is comfortable is an old man travelling alone. He sits in the front seat and looks serene. I want to ask him why he is alone but lose my nerve. Often he hands his camera to me and asks me to take his picture. When it runs out of battery, he hands me his cellphone. I plug in my earphones to try and combat the nausea brought on by TURN-TURN-TURN-LOOP!, but he is impervious to the hidden sign of headphones, i.e, leave me alone. He taps me on the shoulder, and hands me his little Nokia, and I comply with very bad grace. 

This is the first time I've ever been so close to snow. I grab some in both my hands holding it, revelling in its texture. Snow is crumbly, snow is so white it hurts your eyes if you look across a large expanse of it. I feel the give of the snow when I pick it up to make it into a snowball, I am a tropical child, and here I am tossing myself into the snow to make a snow angel, it burns under my low rise jeans, but look at me! I'm doing it! The others are more confident, running up and down the snow hill, but I feel my sneakers sink in and slide, and I'm too scared to take a risk, so I just stay at the bottom, holding my chunk of snow till it bites into my palms. 

In Nubra, I remember that I've read about a certain kind of local beer that's good. We ask for "chang" to rhyme with "clang" and are corrected gently, "chhang" to rhyme with "hung." They source us a bottle at the Dragon Guest House, and we sip it cautiously, it's like fizzy wine mixed with wheat beer. The man serving us is a recent Delhi migrant and he's amused by our low brow tastes. He works the tourist circuits--up next, he is off to Rishikesh for rafting season. 

The lights go out, and I persuade my friend to hop out and see if she can find someone to ask if they're coming back soon. She grumbles, but picks up the torch and goes outside. A minute later, she calls to me, and I refuse at first, because it's so cold outside, and so warm inside, but she insists, and I climb out of bed and go and stick my head out of the door. "Look," she says, softly, and I walk towards her and look up, and the sky is blanketed with stars, so many, so bright, so shining, they break my heart, because I will never see a sky like that for the first time again, and already, even though they are vast and the fact of them is right there, already I miss them a little. 

Phone Review: Nokia Lumia 720 (with inputs from The Good Thing)

Truth be told, I wanted to post this review the very first week I got my new phone. The Good Thing suggested I exercise caution. "Is there anything you don't like about it?" "NO!" was my emphatic reply. I loved it, I love it, but two weeks into using it, I can come up with a list of cons too. So, this will be a balanced review.

FOR the Nokia Lumia 720:

1) It's cheaper than an iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy or the Google Nexus or whatever your current covetous choice is.

2) At the price range it's at, it's far better looking than all its contemporaries. If this matters to you, no one can ever accurately guess how much my phone cost. "30k?" "Try half of that."

3) The camera is amazing.

4) It's fast--I mean, really fast. After years of laggy Androids, it's a pleasure to type out a contact name, without Android doing that thing where it doesn't register and goes back to the A's, after you've spent a couple of minutes trying to get a text to your friend Priyanka. Similarly, for apps and whatnot, you press the tile that indicates in and in seconds, you can see your message. I guess iPhone users won't identify with this, but it's a pleasure for Android-ers.

Good Thing: "I don't think it's faster, it's just more responsive."
Me: "..."
GT: "Like, when the screen loads, it shows you the phone doing something, not just a blank screen like Android. ACTUALLY,  the new Android is faster."

5) The battery just goes on and on and on. I need to charge my phone for an hour a day. That's about it. If I don't charge and just let it run, it'll flash the "battery critically low" sign, and THEN, after about 45 minutes, it turns off. Since I bought it, it did that for the first time today. And that's only because I slept another two hours and couldn't be bothered to get up and plug it in. There's an in-built battery saver, which you can turn on if you're on the road and can't get to a charger.

6) Speaking of apps, I know the main problem with Windows Phones is that there aren't enough apps on it. You know how many apps I miss? Exactly one. Ola Cabs has not come up with a WP app yet, and their mobile version kind of sucks (look into this, Ola Cabs!) but apart from this, everything else works like a charm. I have 5 different kinds of Nokia-specific camera apps, which are fantastic, and I have Instagram and Whatsapp, a word game I love called Wordament, and a Windows Phone-specific app called Divvy Up, which basically lets you input an entire bill and then calculates how much each person owns.

GT: "How many times have you used Divvy Up? Like once?"
Me: "How many times do you have to eat at a new restaurant before you recommend it?"
GT: "It takes 15 minutes for you to do all the calculation. That seems like a long time."
Me: "But this way I don't have to pay for other people's drinks."
GT: "It's like plugging Angry Birds on the WP."


7) Live tiles. You can make them any colour you like--mine is a glorious magenta--and they update with information on your home screen very attractively. The 'Me' tile is basically a place for all my notifications--Facebook, Twitter etc--and I can also post from there to whatever social networking site I prefer. 

8) Fast tethering, as long as your data lasts. It doesn't cut you off halfway.

AGAINST the Nokia Lumia 720:

1) I'm not crazy about HERE Maps. I know it's meant to be EVEN BETTER than Google Maps and whatnot, but if I didn't vaguely know my way somewhere, I wouldn't have realised that it was taking me in completely the wrong direction. There are a few things in it that need ironing out, I think. I like that it speaks in an Indian-English accent, very endearing, but I think I'm going to get Google Maps on this phone after all. The plus features for HERE Drive is that it marks out petrol pumps, parking lots and ATMs in your area, which is very useful.

* The Good Thing has recommended that I use Google Maps before I publish this review. *downloads*

So, we compared the two side-by-side. HERE Drive has turn by turn navigation, even though it might be a bit wobbly, I entered a few other locations and it gave me accurate directions. Google Maps doesn't have an official WP client, so no voice navigation, but it IS a bit more updated than HERE for Delhi. For example: searching for Starbucks on HERE threw up nothing, while G Maps had five different locations I could go to. On the other hand, searching for Starbucks on Google Maps also showed me Olive in Mehrauli and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

HERE has the advantage in that you can download it and access it offline, BUT, you have to keep an eye on the address. G Maps used side-by-side might give you an address you can then input into HERE to use the voice navigation for.

More details on this feature when I use it in Goa/Mumbai, the other maps I've downloaded, just to see what it's like in a city I'm not sure of my way around.

2) Again, this is an Android-specific thing, but I don't like that I can't pop out the battery if the phone hangs. You can however hold down two keys to reboot.

3) Facebook messaging doesn't show up as a notification. (There might be an app for this, I haven't yet checked.)

4) Pictures save as each copy you do. So, if I edit a picture using three different apps, I have three copies of the same picture and then have to delete. Android saves them in different app folders, so you don't have to wade through three thousand copies.
 
5) Because there aren't that many WP owners, there aren't that many tips and tricks available online. You have to muddle along with everyone else.

6) The default search (with the built-in magnifying glass button) is Bing. You can't change this. What you CAN do is get a Google search tile on your home screen and just use that.

7) You also can't change the default keyboard. The Nokia keyboard is nice and big, and learns your responses quite quickly, but SwiftKey was magic. 

Verdict: Buy, if you use your phone for a lot of photography, social networking and messages.

And now, on to the photos!

A new series I'm doing on traffic light portraits, this man had the whole world with him.

Nokia's Glam Me app is like crack for selfie addicts. You can even make your eyes bigger or your face thinner. This photo just has a filter however.

 

 

Look closely at this picture. Taken with Nokia Cinemagraph, you can choose to animate certain parts of a picture. The leaves move, the sunshine glints. It's very addictive.

Playing with colour pop and Instagramming a plate of Chicken Kiev at the IIC

Life in Instagram Part Two

See part one here.

I've been trying to have more lunch gatherings. Usually on weekends, it means my guests wind up falling asleep, more often than not. Here's my friend being nap-bombed by a cat who likes nothing more than to insert himself into the curves of humans and fall asleep like that.

Boy, it's been raining a lot lately. This is what happens to my lane each time it goes on for more than an hour. Result: housebound.

I left my year-long gig with Brown Paper Bag last month. From this month on, I've been working as the lifestyle correspondent for BLOUIN ARTINFO. Longer post on being a writer versus being the editor of something coming up soon. This photo is from a goodbye-good morning coffee I had with my colleague.

I went to Bangalore earlier this month to hang with the Good Thing and his parents. Yup.

I see long distance reducing considerably in our future, or, at the very least, a lot more photographs like this one. Planes. I'm an expert.

And my opinion on planes? Air India is proving to be the best and cheapest way to travel. No, honestly.

My mother's house is being renovated so she's staying with me for the foreseeable future. I haven't lived with ANYONE in five years, and I haven't lived with my parents in ten. It took some getting used to, but now we have a rhythm.

The perks of the situation are the furniture from the old house making its way to me. I have a washing machine now (no longer in the landing, thank goodness) and a big fridge instead of my single-person one (that's become my booze fridge). Plus someone to ask if I've had breakfast in the morning. It's nice.

I'd been avoiding Fork You in Hauz Khas Village because I heard the food was terrible. A friend organised a lunch there, despite my dire warnings, and I went, all prepared to say "I told you so." Um.

I had to eat my words along with one of the best medium-rare bacon cheeseburgers I've ever had. Plus, pretty cheap and happy hours.

Switched phones recently, going from being a dedicated Android user to the Windows Phone 8 interface. Obviously, this deserves a longer review post (I'm waiting for a few more days to do it), but can I just say the camera on this phone---a Nokia Lumia 720--is insanely awesome. This effect is from one of the built-in Nokia apps and is of the Shiv temple adjoining my house that I can see from the bedroom window.

This is the only photo in the series taken from this phone, and I think you'll notice a considerable difference between this one and the others. 

Pretty, right?