सुखकर्ता. Happy maker. The steamed version.

Pasta can pretend to be anything. Or, actually, anything can pretend to be pasta. It is, by definition, a shapeshifting starch—a lump of unleavened dough, culinary Play-Doh, typically wheat flour, forced into a shape and cooked in boiling water. Varanfal is pasta from

Reissuing this. Thread.

I will be in conversation with the uniquely cerebral and wickedly funny Ambarish Satwik - so looking forward A Suitable Agency

There is a peculiar tyranny at work in our morning ablutions, brought about by an insidious agent: sodium lauryl sulfate. This wretched chemical, a detergent that lurks in every toothpaste, is the substance responsible for making it foam in the mouth. It lingers in the oral

I first read Paro: Dreams of Passion in med school a little over three decades ago. Somewhere around page 20, I was confronted with the line, “They exuded the civet smell of recent sexual activity.” It was the perfect literary ambush. Paro has now been anointed a Penguin Modern

For those who have exhausted the artistic potential of belly button lint.

Sliced tuna and watermelon are doppelgängers.

A tirade. Against Indian Accent, Delhi’s much-lauded temple of gastronomy, where the well-heeled and the well-fed go to stroke their palates with innovation. A couple of days back, they were found peddling a culinary sleight of hand.   The offending dish, an offering on the

The view I have to endure at work. The backdrop to all my surgical and endovascular activity. The Central Ridge: 850 hectares of deciduous reserved forest in the heart of Delhi’s urban sprawl, draped over the tail of one of the oldest geological features on planet earth, the

Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961), the Japanese philosopher, developed a theory explaining why certain objects made by unknown craftsmen were so beautiful. He coined the word mingei, which meant ‘crafts of the people’. In his book The Beauty of Everyday Things, he writes that the one

Possibly the only product whose primary, universally acknowledged function (for which it was designed) is precisely what the manufacturer, in a clear warning, advises against.

Pune. A tree grows out of an unmarked grave, possibly belonging to a French soldier of fortune in the Peshwa’s army. His remains have nourished roots far deeper than any loyalty he may have held in life. Perhaps this is the most honest memorial one could have: forgotten by

Omakase is an exercise in blind faith. The menu and the price list are hidden from you. You’re paying for the surrender.

If you microwave Mysore pak for a mere twenty seconds before eating, you’re effectively signing over your free will.

At the age of thirteen, in the late 1940s, Thomas Fogarty, newly bereft of his father, found himself employed at Cincinnati’s Good Samaritan Hospital, sorting supplies and learning the rhythms of the place from the ground up. With time and a certain doggedness, he moved from the