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[Print] The Art of Living

In November 1955, Libia Lobo Sardesai went missing. There was no letter, no witnesses, no investigation. And yet, nobody worried about her whereabouts. To her credit, Lobo hadn’t given anyone reason to worry. She staged her disappearance carefully, fabricating a transfer to Belgaum, adopting a pseudonym and trudging through jungles in the Western Ghats to evade detection. When she surfaced six years later in December 1961, she had earned a new identity as an activist, a freedom fighter and the voice of Goa—although nobody knew her name yet.
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As The Asiatic Society of Mumbai’s first woman president, 83-year-old Vispi Balaporia wants books to live forever

Even though it has been exactly five years and two-and-a-half terms since she assumed the presidency at The Asiatic Society of Mumbai, Vispi Balaporia has nary a clue as to why she is the first woman to do so. She looks around her Breach Candy apartment, almost as if the answer is written on the walls half-haloed by the westerly sun. “I think it just boils down to challenging the status quo,” the 83-year-old eventually says, the evening light gilding her crown of silver curls.It’s not that there...
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Bakula Patel almost drowned in the Tapi River. At 80, she is now a medal-winning swimming champion

Most people with a phobia would tie themselves in knots to avoid the trigger that causes it. Bakula Patel isn’t like most people. The 80-year-old swimming champion was once an aquaphobe. As for what prompted her to dip her toes—and the rest of her body—in the water, she reveals it was a bid to rediscover joy and a more authentic version of herself. “I was into sports and athletics from a young age, but I lost my parents early, was married off at thirteen and became a widow when my children were still young. I felt all alone,” she shares over the phone from her Surat home. When her children flew the nest several years later, she didn’t know what to do, she recalls, her voice laced with melancholy. “So I thought I would distract myself with a sport.” She picked swimming, as much to overcome her fear as to numb her heartache. A month later, she nearly drowned.
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The sprawling gardens at this Bengaluru resort made me feel like I was in Bridgerton

The summer I turned eight was the summer my dad made a thrilling announcement: we were headed on a holiday to the American East Coast. The dates were set, the tickets booked and the accommodations arranged. We were based in London at the time, but we had family in the US, and my dad, ever the saver, was determined to economise on lodging wherever possible. The itinerary was packed with familiar places and names: Washington D.C. with this aunt, New York City with that uncle, Maryland with a recently resurrected second cousin. The only exception was Buffalo, home to the Niagara Falls, which, by some minor miracle—and to my insurmountable joy—had no relative to host us. Instead, the schedule displayed another name: Marriott—a company my uncle worked for, and one that would, in the years to come, remain emblazoned in my cerebral hard drive.
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At 100, Goan freedom fighter Libia Lobo Sardesai still has plenty of fight left in her

In November 1955, Libia Lobo Sardesai went missing. There was no letter, no witnesses, no investigation. And yet, nobody worried about her whereabouts. To her credit, Lobo hadn’t given anyone reason to worry. She staged her disappearance carefully, fabricating a transfer to Belgaum, adopting a pseudonym and trudging through jungles in the Western Ghats to evade detection. When she surfaced six years later in December 1961, she had earned a new identity as an activist, a freedom fighter and the v...
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This new art show in Hyderabad looks like fashion, design and art had a love child

A woolly cocoon encrusted in crystals and stones adorns a wall. A preternatural pillar guards another. In between, stand bronze men with lunar bodies and no heads, still living and breathing. No, this isn’t a scene from a sci-fi movie, though if the selection on display is anything to go by, it’s every bit as theatrical. Welcome to Currents, a salon series and the maiden Hyderabad outpost of New York-born, New Delhi-based art gallery Nature Morte, unveiled in collaboration with Hetero Pharma Gro...
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Exclusive: Bharti Kher dedicates her most extensive UK presentation to the female body

Over the course of her 30-year career, the artist became famous for her use of snake-shaped bindis in and as art. Kher’s philosophy is this: Art by any other name is still art; no matter the object from which it is created. Take Ancestor, an 18-foot-tall patinated bronze sculpture from her Intermediaries series. Portraying a mythical mother figure, the installation features 23 small heads, each salvaged from a broken clay figurine (it was displayed at New York’s Central Park between 2022 and 202
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Neeta Lulla takes Vogue India inside her couture archive of iconic film costumes

There’s a song in Darr, the 1993 Yash Chopra-produced megahit, where Juhi Chawla peacocks about the pool in a shocking pink swimsuit. The colour, mind you, isn't what’s shocking. “You have to zoom in to find it,” deadpans Neeta Lulla. “I mean, really zoom in.” By “it”, she means her logo, which, at no more than a fingernail large, has taken me twenty attempts and my toddler’s toy microscope to locate. “It was a dare,” continues the 4-time National Award-winning couturier and costume designer, wh
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This arts hub in the Rajasthan desert may look AI-generated but it’s very real—and useful

Occupying a built-up area of just 9,000 square feet, the space spirals like a swirling sand dune, a hat-tip to the surrounding desert, offering incremental square footage at each elevation and five times more usable space in all. It includes a 27,000-square-foot open auditorium and inclined rooftop gardens from where panoramas of the desert unfold in every possible direction. “The project exemplifies how thoughtful architecture can create expansive community spaces without a large footprint,” sa
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Mother-daughter artist duo Anju and Biraaj Dodiya open up about their distinct journeys with art and each other

It’s the night before Diwali and Anju and Biraaj Dodiya are on opposite sides of the world. They appear side by side on Zoom; Anju muted in Mumbai, Biraaj unmuted in New York. “I’m usually with her when she logs into these meetings,” says Biraaj as her mother tries and fails to unmute herself. Ten minutes later, Anju’s microphone has learned to behave, we’ve all had a hearty laugh and I’ve whispered a word of thanks to the tech gods, although neither mother nor daughter seems fazed by the caprices of technology.
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[Print] A Brush With Destiny: Anju & Biraaj Dodiya

It’s the night before Diwali and Anju and Biraaj Dodiya are on opposite sides of the world. They appear side by side on Zoom; Anju muted in Mumbai, Biraaj unmuted in New York. “I’m usually with her when she logs into these meetings,” says Biraaj as her mother tries—and fails—to unmute herself. Ten minutes later, Anju’s microphone has learned to behave, we’ve all had a hearty laugh and I’ve whispered a word of thanks to the tech gods, although at this moment on my screen, neither mother nor daughter seems particularly fazed by the caprices of technology.
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This deep and dramatic duplex in Bengaluru subtly nods to its owners’ Assamese heritage

You can take the person out of the place, but you can’t take the place out of the person. Or so the adage goes. In this case, the person was ‘people’, and the place Assam, but the sentiment much the same. “Every great story begins with people deciding to fly the nest and follow their aspirations. Ours was no different,” says graphic designer Pooja Dihingia, one half of Bengaluru-based UI/UX design studio Yellowchalk. When she and her husband, Rajiv Kakati, Yellowchalk’s other half, moved from As
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This bungalow in Ahmedabad is designed around the five elements of nature

The interior doffs its hat to nature, honouring the five elements—fire, water, air, space and earth—in equal measure. Exhibit A: the living room, where leaf-patterned screens, sheer curtains and wood-clad columns breathe the air of a forest. The dining room, meanwhile, has none of these trappings. A blazing bolthole with an incandescent wall, it stokes a roaring, invisible fire. Then, there’s the puja room, still more divergent, cured by the presence of an abiding water body. True to Morphogensi
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This Bengaluru home is a postcard from the Amalfi Coast

First came COVID, then a silver lining. At least that was how it went for Megha Gupta and Ankit Agarwal. As Delhi natives who had spent much of their working life in Mumbai, a move to Bengaluru four years ago at last prompted in them a desire to put down roots. The timing was serendipitous: the country was under lockdown, the housing market had slumped and prices were in their favour. Surely, there was no better time to buy. And so, after searching high and low for the perfect property, the coup
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This Bengaluru home is a kaleidoscope of gems old and new

For Nruthya Kesavan and Ishwar Sridharan, the vision for their Bengaluru home was divided right down the middle. “Our requirements presented a bit of a conundrum for the design team,” recalls Kesavan, a technology professional. “While I wanted a colonial touch reminiscent of my grandparents’ home where I grew up, Ishwar was keen on a South Indian aesthetic that wasn’t overly traditional. It was a divided brief that Gayathri and Shreya somehow made good on.” The Gayathri and Shreya in question we
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This palatial weekend villa in Gujarat is a one-way ticket to the past

With a population of 3,000, the village of Agas is a hidden gem in Gujarat’s hinterland. So hidden, that no matter where you start, you can’t reach it without navigating a water canal, a lake, several tractors, a few farms, and cattle determined to moonlight as speed bumps—and not necessarily in that order. Even from the nearest town of Anand, located just 5 kilometres away, it’s an effort—one that Kushal and Richa Bhatt were willing to put in if it meant building a vacation home secreted away f
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This Nainital home in the mountains is an ode to its owners’ Kumaoni roots

An old hand in the merchant navy, Captain Ashok Mehra was no stranger to nomadic life. And yet, the more he sailed, the more he felt a calling to return home and put down roots. Not just anywhere. Specifically somewhere in Uttarakhand, deep inside the mountains, ideally close to family. As Kumaonis hailing from Uttarakhand’s Almora, he and his wife, Tulsi, had long dreamed of acquiring land in the Himalayan region. So when they found the perfect sylvan parcel in Mukteshwar, it felt like the manifestation of a homecoming many years in the making. To bring their Nainital home to life, they enlisted architect Vipendra Chauhan and designer Rohit Chaudhary of Noida-based AMU Design Studio, with whom they were well acquainted, having previously worked with them on renovating their Noida apartment.
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At India’s G20 meet in Bhubaneswar, designer Ashiesh Shah unveiled 21 celestial pillars

Vedic scriptures make several mentions of the stambha: pillars that connect the celestial and terrestrial, serving as a bridge between the cosmos and material creation. And yet, many of the stories behind these otherworldly totems, as seen in ancient temples and edifices around the country, remain untold. On 14th May, some found a voice when Ashiesh Shah, founder and principal of his eponymous multidisciplinary collective, Atelier Ashiesh Shah, unveiled a collection of 21 divine columns in a thr
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Kunal Nayyar and Neha Kapur’s Delhi home is a love letter to India

It’s just past 10am when I reach Kunal Nayyar and Neha Kapur’s housing enclave in South Delhi, but the guard at the gate has no intention of letting me in. No cabs allowed, I’m told, although he is unwilling to commit how far I have to leg it. With half an hour to go (my meeting is scheduled for 10.30am), I convince myself that it can’t be that far. So I pop on my sunhat and slip through the gate, in search of the magic number I have sprawled on my palm. Only, several mistaken turns later, I sti
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This diamantaire’s Mumbai home is inspired by bridal jewellery

In some parts, the home carries the whimsy of an amusement park; in others, the opulence of a neo-noir Parisian boudoir. The only thing, then, that unites the various spaces is the lavish use of stone. “It serves as the most integral part of the decor, with various colours and patterns shining through while also helping to demarcate one room from another,” says Shetty. True to her words, the Mumbai home unfolds like a marble museum—if ever there were such a thing. Cloud-like marble walls define
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This content creator’s nine-bedroom Airbnb in Manali is inspired by his travels

Somewhere in the mountains in the north of India, the mist rolls back just enough to reveal an Airbnb in Manali that feels like Finland. Or Bali. But also very much like India. “I drew inspiration from everywhere, from the glass houses of the Finnish Lapland to the chic boho vibe of Ubud, to the community hostel culture of Europe. Each corner tells a story,” says Anunay Sood. He should know. As a travel content creator who lives out of a backpack (and occasionally a suitcase), his adventures hav
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This Mumbai apartment on the 50th floor is a Balinese-inspired haven

In Mumbai’s Lower Parel, where glittering skyrises and colossal office complexes sit shoulder to shoulder, is a terrace that could have been born in Bali. With woven canopy seats, over 20 species of plants, and unhindered vistas of the sea and the skyline, it’s so far removed from the city that it exists in a realm of its own—one where the only visitors that come knocking, if at all, are the kites, the clouds and the morning breeze. And yet, there’s more to the home that sets it apart from its neighbours.
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This farmhouse in Gurgaon is made entirely of shipping containers

Before the pandemic hit in 2020 and they began living in a compact farmhouse in Gurgaon, Merrie and Kundan Bhullar were just an average couple. They lived in a skyrise, braved traffic on the daily, and regularly lamented about the pollution. Then came the lockdown. “Cooped up indoors for months on end, we felt compelled to be closer to nature,” says the couple, who works in design and manufacturing and also owns a home in the US. Unable to shake off the feeling, they set their hearts on moving to their 2-acre farmland, abutting the Aravalli ridge, in the Haryana village of Baliyawas. The area had just received an electricity connection. The couple, of course, took it as a sign.
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