Born in Kerala, I ought to have an umbilical connection with the Malabar Coast but it is to the Coromandel Coast that I feel a stronger pull. This is the travelogue that resulted from a breathless 11-day journey from Chennai to Rameswaram, between coast and hinterland, more than one thousand kilometres.
The Ritz-Carlton Bangalore debuted in India on October 31, 2013 at the cusp of the downtown business and entertainment precinct and the colonial-era neighbourhood of Richmond Town. It didn’t wait long to make itself at home. Read the review in Outlook Traveller Luxe
The history of Indian rock music is a largely untold one. This is a subculture that has been mostly ignored by the mainstream media though, it emerges, its antiquity in India dates back to the early 1960s when it attempted to sing in tune with the beat that swept the West. Sidharth Bhatia has authored a new book, India Psychedelic, on this theme, which comes close on the heels of Naresh Fernandes’ Taj Mahal Foxtrot, a history of India’s jazz scene. Though I found Bhatia’s book interesting, I felt it confined itself to a narrow era – the decades of the 1960s and 1970s – and just about pays lip services to the years thereafter. My interest, on the other hand, has been focused on the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, when Internet technology paved the way for musicians and artists to assert their right to be heard sans borders. It dwells, also, on my area of interest: the evolution of the Bangalore rock music scene beginning with the Bangalore Music Strip.
This article, written for Yahoo Originals, attempts to colour in the grey areas left by Bhatia’s book, as well as etch a fresh canvas of perspective.
First a bump, then a mild churning of the stomach followed by a swimming sensation of buoyancy. The earth fell away and I was sucked into the sky. “No smoking. Absolutely no smoking!” warned the guide, pointing at the propane jets. “If you light up, we will all die.” He squeezed a lever above his head and the nozzles spat yellow-white tongues of flame into the innards of the balloon. Air, heated on the go. Our sustenance and stay on this ride. As we floated up, up, up into the air, without wings, in a hot air balloon, Appenzell spread out beneath us like a patchwork quilt.
Forget Swiss banks. Appenzell is where the Swiss treasure their traditions. And, like Swiss cheese, they age well, writes Bijoy Venugopal in Outlook Traveller, November 2013
Murder is kosher. War needs no introduction. Even school shootings make the cut at the dinner table. But rape? No. Never. We never talk about it.
Love, eh? Only genuine lovers can gauge the depth of the phrase kabab mein haddi.
Whatever it took to step out of their fathers’ long shadows, the Beatles’ sons have now risen. But will they ever come together (right now) and repeat that great journey across the universe?