(Shhh. I went for a birthday party. We aren’t supposed to celebrate birthdays, isn’t it? I think there are more than a couple of fatwas out there which say so. There was cake too, which was cut to the accompaniment of the birthday song and clapping hands. Pagan traditions, I tell you! But the cake…
“I see that you’ve had something to eat now.” Quite an acute sense of observation, I thought to myself. As I photographed food all day at the fine dining restaurant which he was opening up in Delhi’s boho district, he may have had many thoughts running through his head when he learned that I was…
The effects of the back to back trips to Old Delhi for consecutive meals was becoming evident. (I’m not sure how apt the usage of the term ‘consecutive’ would be in context of the fact that the meals were separated from each other by a period of 15+ hours of waking.) Guilt was trying to…
Q: What’s the difference between a hipster and a guy fasting during Ramadan? A: The guy who’s fasting will eat the food after Instagramming it. Browse through Instagram or Facebook or any popular photo sharing platform, and all you see these days is people putting up pictures of what they are having for Iftar: dining…
There just isn’t enough sleep to be had during Ramadan. Given a choice, the best time to simply crash would be right after Iftar. But there’s the question of Taraweeh prayers, and by the time you are done with them, the hour of Sehri starts looming. C’mon, if you’ve got just about 3 hours to…
Day One, and I did nothing today. Nothing. So much for all my plans of going out to visit a mosque and break my fast in the company of others. Not that I didn’t want to. After all, I spent considerable time planning things over the past couple of weeks. Over the past couple of…
Ramadan has begun in parts of the world. Here in India, as I sit writing this, we’re still waiting for the confirmatory (and figurative) “blasting of cannons” (which is more like bursting of crackers) and sirens going off in some neighborhoods to announce the onset of the month. I’ve written a guest post for the…
Well yes. Not exactly, but yes, in a way I was thrown out of a mosque today. If you’re wondering why you don’t see any pictures on this post, that was in fact the reason why I found myself in a situation which turned unsavory enough. For a really long time, I think it’s been…
Another evening, another exit from a mosque. And another pat on the shoulder. Rather an arm around the shoulder. I was too busy looking at the image preview on my camera, so I didn’t pay much attention thinking it was one of the friends who was following me down the stairs out of the mosque….
Anybody moving around South Delhi would at some point cross that flyover plus major junction known as Chirag Dilli, situated on one of the arterial roads which cut across Delhi. The name always gave out that the place had some historical significance – I could never find the time to know more about it. Till…