Dec 2025

Juhu has never really been short of bars. What it has been short of is places that understand pause. Spaces that don’t rush to impress, don’t over-explain themselves, and don’t confuse darkness with drama. KOJAK slips into this gap quietly, above the familiar chaos of Juhu Tara Road, without banners or bravado. You could walk past the building and miss it entirely. Inside, nothing is trying to grab your attention all at once. The first thing you notice is not the music or the

The last show of the Blenders Pride Fashion Tour did not take place inside a hall, or even on land. It unfolded on the Hooghly, with a barge anchored mid-river and the Howrah Bridge watching from behind, unchanged and unmoved. In that setting, Anamika Khanna presented an AK|OK collection that did not ask to be admired as craft in the traditional sense, but as something in the process of becoming. From the start, it was clear this was not about preserving technique in its fami

At Black Cube Gallery , Divine Manifestation , a solo exhibition by Meena Sansanwal , unfolds less as a conventional presentation of artworks and more as an intimate mapping of an inner universe. Presented from 7 to 22 January 2026, the exhibition brings together paintings, paper mache sculptures, and mixed-media installations created over nearly a decade, offering a rare, sustained view into an artist’s evolving inner language. Sansanwal, who studied painting at Delhi Colleg

Gurgaon doesn’t lack Japanese restaurants. In fact, it embraced the cuisine long before it became shorthand for urban cool, and Golf Course Road now reads almost like a curated map of Far Eastern influences. Which is precisely why Oju, filmmaker Karan Johar’s latest restaurant, arrives without needing to announce itself loudly. It doesn’t rely on novelty, celebrity pull, or culinary theatrics to make its point. Instead, it slows things down. Co-owned by Johar and Truepalate H

Colonel Saab doesn’t feel like a restaurant that was “designed” in the conventional sense. It feels more like a place that came together slowly, piece by piece, memory by memory, until it began to resemble a home. Not an ordinary home, but one shaped by travel, inheritance, and a very specific idea of Indian grandeur. Set near Trafalgar Square, it occupies a rare position in London’s dining landscape, not because it is Indian, but because it is unapologetically personal. The

In a city like Mumbai, where reinvention is constant yet memory lingers stubbornly beneath every layer of change, adaptive reuse has become more than a design strategy; it has become a cultural responsibility. Nowhere is this more evident than in Lower Parel, once the industrial backbone of the city’s textile economy, where mills that powered livelihoods and movements have slowly been reabsorbed into Mumbai’s contemporary social life. It is within this charged context that La

What most people don’t realize is that a luxury-scented detergent is not scented the way mass-market laundry powders are, where a sharp synthetic “fresh” note is simply added to mask chemical residue, but is constructed much closer to how a fine fragrance is built, starting with the choice of aroma molecules themselves. Instead of relying on volatile top notes that burn off during the wash cycle, these formulations use heavier fragrance compounds such as musks, woods, resins,

Located within Epicuria, Nehru Place, one of Delhi’s most active food and entertainment destinations, Thanks & Beyond is the latest restaurant venture by restaurateur Priyank Sukhija. Spread across 8,000 square feet, the restaurant is conceived not as a singular dining space, but as a layered environment where architecture, interiors, and hospitality work together to shape the overall experience. Designed by Natelier by Bent Chair, led by Natasha Jain and Neeraj Jain, the pro

Amina Bhatia curates a 1,100 sq ft menswear flagship for Arjan Dugal in Mumbai, blending historic architecture with contemporary elegance. The heritage ceiling, soaring 16 feet high, becomes the centrepiece of the narrative, while the steel beams—one running along the ceiling and another positioned at nine feet—are transformed from structural components into defining elements of the design. With a keen understanding of structure, Amina uses these members to introduce a mezzan

Abhishek Sharma’s latest couture collection, Ratiaranya , was presented in New Delhi in December through a format that resisted spectacle. Shown at The Upper House by Tivoli, the presentation unfolded as a contained experience, allowing the work to be read closely rather than consumed quickly. The collection draws from emotional states rather than overt narrative. References to awakening, desire and instinct appear subtly, carried through texture, form and movement instead of

I didn’t plan to finish After Us in one sitting. It happened anyway. That usually tells you something before a review even begins. Not because the book is racing ahead on twists or spectacle, but because it knows how to hold attention without demanding it. Akshay Chopra’s After Us | A Tale of Life Beyond Super Intelligent AI  is exactly that kind of book. Quietly confident. Uncomfortable in the right places. Despite its premise, Sui is far more interested in people than in t

A lot of productivity books assume something about you before you even start reading. That you’re lazy. Or undisciplined. Or that you just haven’t discovered the “right system” yet. This one doesn’t do that, which is probably why I stayed with it. Ravi Saroj starts from a much more familiar place. Procrastination. Overthinking. Wanting to do better but somehow not moving. And instead of pretending he cracked productivity overnight, he admits it took time. A lot of trial. A lo

AdiDev Press has introduced a new picture-book series that celebrates Indian cities through color, movement, and everyday moments—the kind children notice instinctively. The series opens with Adi and Arya Visit Delhi and Adi and Arya Visit Kolkata , two books created especially for toddlers and emerging readers, where illustrations are not decorative additions but the heart of the storytelling. Written by Chitwan Mittal and illustrated by Asuma Noor, the books invite childre

Crazy Cock has unveiled what it claims is a world first: an Indian single malt finished in Mahura casks. Titled Madhuca: The Heritage Editions , the release marks a significant moment not only for the brand but for Indian whisky-making, positioning indigenous ingredients and processes at the centre of a global luxury conversation. Crafted at South Seas Distilleries, the makers of India’s oldest single malts, the collection brings together heritage, experimentation, and a dist

Lagori is a childhood game most Indians remember instinctively rather than intellectually. The game involves stacking seven stones, knocking them down, and then rebuilding them again. Balance, interruption, repetition. For Nikita Bansal, founder of Yaahvi, that rhythm stayed long after childhood, shaped by afternoons spent playing the game in Assam, and it now finds form in a new handcrafted lighting collection that carries the same sense of tension and reconstruction. The La

Chrome has returned to the Cattelan Italia catalogue. Once closely associated with the 1980s, it now appears in a more controlled, contemporary form, aligned with interiors that move easily between memory and modern production. The emphasis is no longer on shine but on precision, on how the surface responds to light and how it defines structure rather than decoration. That approach is clear in Eva. The chair reads as minimal, but only initially. Its proportions are carefully

What gives Puja Mukherjee Khattri’s Play To Kill its hold on the reader is not loud action but the steady discomfort that comes from watching everyday routines shift in ways the characters cannot explain. Delhi becomes the ideal setting for this kind of story—crowded, fast-moving, and full of places where people disappear into one another’s blind spots. The novel begins with incidents that seem unrelated: a child disappearing inside a supermarket, a break-in that leaves no v

Relationship advice is often delivered in sweeping statements, yet most people struggle not because they lack theory but because they lack clarity. Debotosh Chatterjee approaches this familiar terrain with a different temperament. His book is rooted in everyday behavior—the silences we let grow, the boundaries we fail to set, and the assumptions that settle in unnoticed. Instead of treating relationships as grand emotional undertakings, he breaks them down into habits that de

Fiction set in hospitals often leans on urgency, but Mayank Gupta chooses a different entry point. His debut turns its attention to the quieter corners of a U.S. medical center, observing five Indian doctors who move through the same space while carrying questions they never quite voice. The book isn’t driven by events as much as by the private weight these characters try to balance behind practiced composure. Dr. Silva stands at the center, steady on the surface, until a ban

At The Dhan Mill in New Delhi, the new Gazal Gupta flagship opens like a quiet revelation. The entrance, flanked by two whimsical dog sculptures, sets the tone for a space that doesn’t announce itself loudly but settles around you with the calm assurance of a place shaped by intention. Once inside, the soaring vaults, lime-washed surfaces, and monochrome marble floors establish an atmosphere that feels part palace, part contemporary atelier—rooted in memory yet distinctly mod