When I pull back my window drapes, I discover half of Delhi has disappeared. It’s my first day in the city and a new bed in a strange room has me rising early. From the tenth floor, I see the horizon has dissolved in a cloud of heavy fog as a cold snap grips India’s … Continue reading
Noorjehan Bilgrami has spent decades fascinated by one colour. Born in Hyderabad, India Noorjehan was still very young when her parents chose to migrate to Pakistan as partition cleaved India in two. Moving to Karachi as a nine-year-old, she would nurture an interest in art until as an adult she made it her calling. However, Noorjehan … Continue reading
In his cave, the cheese maker is hard at work. A burst of chilled air greeted us when he first opened the heavy door and now the floor beneath our feet is slick and cold. In the air is the faint smell of ammonia, a natural by-product of the ageing cheese. Stacked on the wooden … Continue reading
Nelun Harasgama designs her sarees downstairs while her husband, the photographer Luxshman Nadaraja takes pictures of them upstairs. “He is famous, I am not,” says Nelun, smiling, but that isn’t quite true. Before she ever began designing sarees, Nelun’s paintings won her acclaim but she always found them difficult to talk about. Stark and haunting, … Continue reading
The men sit around the table in solemn conference but they don’t mind when the caretaker W.A Samson interrupts to put a bucket on the table. On rainy days, the roof above the mannequins leaks and Samson is their first line of defence. Much of the beautiful old Town Hall building in Pettah is in … Continue reading
Peter Neusser knows exactly how much distance he covers in a single step – 90cm. He can replicate the distance nearly exactly if he’s walking at a certain pace and it’s important he does so when it comes to creating one of his Multiples. These extraordinary photographs are actually several images – anywhere up to … Continue reading
Walking across Barefoot’s courtyard on a sunny day, Marisa Gnanaraj is hailed by more than one regular. She’s a familiar face here, the young designer whose debut collection under her ‘MFact’ label sold out almost as soon as it made it to the racks. It also helps that some of these people have known her … Continue reading
On September 22, Sean Panikkar posted clue #1 on his Facebook page. It was a vector visualised as a graph and he followed it with a picture of a glass of orange juice (clue #2), a portrait of Dr. James Naismith who invented Basketball in 1891 (#3), a spade of coffee beans (#4), a painting … Continue reading
It’s 9 a.m. on a Friday and the Old Dutch Hospital is barely stirring. Standing at the entrance, the World Trade Centre towers at his back, Mark Forbes has his gaze firmly fixed on the past. It’s what he’s become increasingly well known for – this ability to peel back the skin of crowded, bustling … Continue reading
It’s close to 6 p.m. and the three wheeler driver throws me a dubious look when I tell him to take me to Rio cinema in Slave Island. Once there, I’m happy to leave the cinema’s two solitary patrons to their film to follow Subha Wijesiriwardena and Tracy Holsinger on their way to a rehearsal. … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 