Gilt, flowers and invasion – a portrait of India between 1560-1860
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
I’ve always had a love-hate affair with my hair.When I was little, I’d beg my mother to braid my hair, and I’d pretend I was Rapunzel locked in the tower with only my hair to connect me to the outside world. As I grew older, I grew less enamored of my hair. Caring for it was time consuming; drying it took a full day unless I could talk someone into helping me with the hairdryer. In the summer, it was heavy against my neck; in the winter, it was full of static, crackling and causing me to spark against every piece ...
Bikram Yoga Trials
Recently I’ve been going through a serious health phase. It’s something that I do occasionally, alongside raw-food weeks and long distance running. It’s alright though, as these phases are short-lived and in-dispersed with bouts of home-cooking and an over indulgence in cream teas. Most recently, a friend and I have tried our hand (and legs) at Bikram yoga. Being a regular yogi, I thought I’d take to the sweatiness easily. I’ve been stuck in a car in hot weather before, so surely yoga in a heated room wouldn’t be a challenge. Not so. What I thought would be my next ...
To Snip, Or Not To Snip
“It’s a boy.” When I first heard those words, I was both elated and disappointed. A boy. Perfect! I mean, I know everyone says they don’t really care what gender their baby is as long it’s healthy, and I didn’t. Except... We’d have to do the snip. You know the one I’m talking about. The one Muslim boys get. The one Jewish boys get. The one some kids just get. Circumcision. Growing up in an Indian Muslim household, circumcision wasn’t really talked about, but it was understood that it was something boys had done, and, that if I ever had a little boy, he’d have ...
An Embarrassment Of Riches
The V&A opens its Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts exhibition on the 10th of October 2009. On first hearing of this, my initial expectations didn’t run so high. I’d been on countless visits to the V&A before to see its South Asian collection and expected the exhibition to be a continuation of this theme (with a few more artefacts). What I saw, however, went beyond expectation. It was a deeper, richer, darker account of the legacy of the Maharajas – and although the pieces with their embellishments were attractive to look at, the subtext was arguably the fall from ...
Inside Or Outside?
So, here in Kerala, I am a ‘saip’, or white man, and will be that before anything else as long as I am here. Whether I’m tucking into beef curry for dinner, wearing a lunghi, sporting an impressive moustache or even someday speaking fluent Malayalam, I am unlikely to ever escape the outsider category I came with. I experienced a somewhat similar phenomenon in Japan, my previous home. The Japanese approach to foreigners tends to be dominated by the dichotomy of ‘uchi’ (inside) and ‘soto’ (outside). As a foreigner, you are destined always to be ‘soto’, regardless of how ...
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