Uncategorized – Rajeshwari Sahay

Books & Bombay – Trilogy, Lower Parel

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of Library”

There is something about books They are inanimate, yet so full of life – at times much better company than humans. If you grew up reading books, befriending them and loving them, you’re bound to have been much happier than most others. A good book can help you sail through the roughest of seas, one page at a time.

Tucked away in a quiet corner of the Raghuvanshi Mills compound in Lower Parel, Trilogy is a true delight for every bibliophile. Upon entering the compound, one is greeted by a series of high-end interior design studios, making it a seemingly unlikely place for a bookstore. However if you ask around a few times for the Mercedes Benz service center, you’ll find an unassuming flight of stairs leading up to this magical haven.

In the times of grand sales on Amazon and Flipkart and a rather insipid device called the Kindle, the smell of a bookstore still manages to charm many readers. Of course, we prefer that some of our favourite books were not quite so heavy on our pockets. Trilogy is a beautiful bookstore-library that provides one with easy access to numerous genres of paperbacks, hard-covers, coffee table books, art manuals, comics, photo-books etc. The front area serves as the bookstore with shelves full of neatly arranged books for sale.

Towards the back is the larger library collection, filed under various genres and sub-genres. Pastel coloured post-its with catchphrases guide you through the shelves. In the middle, a long wooden table with chairs around it makes for a comfortable space to plonk yourself down for a leisurely afternoon with your book. A couple of speakers play some mellow jazz music as the large windows filter in the right amount of sunshine to light up the place.

Ever since I moved to Mumbai, I had been hunting for a place that could provide some meaningful solitude in this maximum city. Back home in Delhi, I generally frequent the Full Circle bookstore and Cafe Turtle on weekends. But surprisingly, Trilogy turned out to be a much larger and lesser crowded space, with chairs, cushions, a library and a soulful kind of silence all under one roof! It is just perfect if you’re looking for a cozy afternoon with your favourite read and some soothing music! Located a hop,skip and jump away from the multitude of cafes that Lower Parel has to offer, in case a cup of coffee is on your list!

Details about their subscription fees and membership charges can be found here:

Welcome to Trilogy.

Chai at Chhota

Indian Food, Indian Tea, Indian Travel, Uncategorized

My incurable penchant for a well made cup of chai takes me to various places around the country – restaurants, cafes, tapris, theatres and even the famous late night cycle-wallas in Mumbai. But a cup of tea that can never be forgotten is the Chai at Chhota.

MICA Mudra Insitute of Communications is an eclectic space on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, buzzing with creative ideas, frisbee games, avant-garde graffiti and the latest Ed Sheeran music. It is of course a B-school, where I happened to pursue an MBA. But it’s so much more!

It is a place where you learn, that profits don’t drive businesses, but ideas and innovations do. It is a place where you understand that your team matters more than your targets. It is also a place that makes sure that for every 4 AM assignment submission, you have a cup of Double Chai by your side at all times.

Everyone who has studied at MICA, has loved it or hated it, has had an indispensable relationship with Chhota (191). Some of our everlasting friendships were forged at Chhota, on the charpais under the lanterns over Double chai or Cold coffee. Breakfast was undoubtedly the best meal at MICA, consumed by the least number of people.

For the majority that arose after 9:30 AM, Chhota was the first word we uttered every morning. A meal never eaten at leisure, chai had instant accompaniments like samosas, poha, cheese vada-pav ready for everyone who chose to utilise the first five minutes of the morning lecture at Chhota.

No one really woke up to the world, before a cup of chai at Chhota.

There was also a large population of Cold coffee loyalists, but chai always emerged as a clear winner – on sunny mornings, rainy evenings and cold, winter nights which were quite unnatural to Ahmedabad. I wouldn’t say that the chai at Chhota was anything remarkable in terms of taste. But then, a cup of tea is never really defined by it’s ingredients.

It is always about the vibe and the story around it – some of them expressed, some of them felt and some of them just fondly remembered, standing with a cup of imported tea , in the pantry of an air conditioned glass building, at the helm of a densely crowded metropolis, looking backwards on an open space with wooden stools, painted tyre swings, a couple of hungry cats and the smell of independence.

The Grown-Up Jeans

Uncategorized

Last weekend, while rearranging my wardrobe at home, I stumbled upon a pair of dark blue, low-rise Levi’s Diva jeans. It was one of those moments, where all you need is a single physical cue to step back into time and reminisce fondly. As I ran my fingers through the slightly faded fabric, I recalled a decade-long journey shared with what happened to be my first pair of Levi’s jeans, ever.

It was the eve of my thirteenth birthday, an iconic one for most millennials. This would mark the beginning of high-school heartbreaks, hormonal earthquakes, acne outbreaks and the like. Growing up in urban India, in the early 00’s , Levi’s was a jeans brand that symbolised a rite of passage. Getting your first pair of Levi Strauss jeans would impart a sense of independence, thrill and confidence. It finally felt like adulthood was approaching, one stylish pair of jeans at a time. Teenage was this grand countdown to becoming an adult and I had already decided that I wanted my first pair of grown-up jeans to celebrate it’s advent.

I walked into a Levi’s store with my dad in one of these swanky, new malls that Delhi was just warming up to those days. I tried on a few and finally picked this particular pair of low-waisted jeans. For a year or two, it became one of those favourite pieces of clothing, reserved only for special occasions and written about in my diary at night. As teenagers, we always had some iconic clothes , which we would wear repeatedly on birthdays, festivals, school functions or some such event. Looking back, these pieces of clothing would immediately be associated with fond memories.

Low waisted jeans soon became unfashionable and were replaced by paradoxically uncomfortable skinny jeans. By the time I got to actual adulthood, cheaper alternatives like black leggings had ubiquitously replaced a pair of jeans. But last weekend, I realised that I had only mentally and socially outgrown my first pair of “grown-up jeans”, and that now even a decade later, I can fit into them perfectly.

Wearing an old pair of jeans is akin to drinking a well-made cup of tea – there is a large amount of nostalgia blended with a serving of warm, fuzzy, happy memories freshening up your mundane life!

The Traveling Teal Kolhapuris

footwear, Indian Travel, Uncategorized

Musings about her romance with Dilli, by guest author Aishvarya Raghavan.

Janpath is a queer place. Maybe because our city is made up of Queer people. Least because most Queerfests/Prides/Marches take place here. Somehow not because you can almost always hear a hawker shouting ‘200 rupaye! 200 rupaye! Haan madame! Dekhlo 200 rupayee!’ and immediately after there’s another hawker, usually opposing our first budding marketer, who comes in to snatch the monopoly away while audaciously stating ‘Madam Zara, Vero Moda, Only 150 rupees Only!”.

No, I’m not talking about an Audi, a Mercedes Benz or two trying to fit into the small lane leading up to D’Paul’s or the famous chicken steamed momos or the fruit seller who only stocks the most exotic fruits. You won’t get Bananas there but ask for English Blueberries and he’ll quickly whip up a kilo of them.

As you walk further towards Connaught Place and stop a bit to soak in the Lutyenian charm, because well, that’s what the architecture of CP does to you, you turn. There’s the NewBookLand every avid reader must have visited at least once and marvelled at how a small, round bookstore could ever stock such delightful volumes. They might have even struck a lovely conversation with the owner who might know about every book ever published.

If you find yourself immune to its literary charm, you might walk onwards to the block which houses footwear. Now it is only with sheer fascination that one enters a footwear store. Not only does it house pieces of leather cut down to the shape of your feet and coloured in your deep tans, whites, noirs, and if you are so inclined, some jazzy silver and shaadi-green, but also a rendezvous with the Cultural trysts Delhi has had.

I had always believed footwear is a sign of your hold on the land. Be it the Mughals who introduced embroidered Mojaris taking inspiration from a somewhat comparatively bland Jutti used by the Rajputs and the plain sandals used by the Brahmins that take the modern day form of chappals to the closed shoes, wedges and Gladiators inspired by the west. A hold on the land means a hold in fashion which will continue on into the future, adapting to modern times.

At first, taking in all of this at one go is not very easy. So much variety and such bling leaves me dazed after every shopping excursion. My experience at Kala Niketan at Janpath was although of a different kind. I expected to as usual be enamoured by their collection and spend hours to come to a conclusion. The moment I entered, through the corner of my eye I could see a pair of Kolhapuris, waiting innocently on a stand. They were like all other Kolhapuris, made of Leather, quite thick and comfortable. What sets them apart is their colour. A happy, radiant Teal.

They looked like an absolutely ordinary pair of Kolhapuri chappals. They looked like a totally unique pair of Kolhapuri Chappals.

Now, I was not one to be hushed by my mother’s constant remarks on how it is so bright that it might not go with any of my clothes.

Teal it was. Teal it is.

The pair fit perfectly on my feet- and in my heart.

No. Delhi is not just a hush of frugality hidden underneath the layers of show, of Gucci, Rolex and makeup you assume to be expensive. Or a boiling pot of ‘fake’ inclusiveness and Indian Chinese Noodles you only get here. Our city is a queer one because it takes everything that is thrown at it, everything that ever existed in this subcontinent and adds its own audacious flavour to it, gives it a pushy stir, only my city can give and Voila!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Aishvarya Raghavan is two dozen years worth of indie literature, Urdu poetry, Asian gourmet food, cups of exotic-flavoured tea and alternative insights into popular culture. You can almost always catch her and her now famous teal Kolhapuris at Oxford Bookstore, Connaught Place curating some gems for her delightful library.