The first few visits to London are invariably enchanting as no one can resist going to places like Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond Street, Carnaby Street, King’s Road in Chelsea, Covent Garden, Marylebone High Street, and Knightsbridge… to list just a few. In fact, every high street in nearly every borough here has stores with...
Autumn in London is poetry… it is as if the soul was walking through smoke and cinnamon. The leaves learn that even a change in colours gets the attention of photographers. If a poet were asked to describe London during autumn, he will surely talk about air turning to amber and the sky wearing its...
Any city stands exposed when seen from a vantage point. One could be in London and watching this city from Horizon 22, like we did yesterday… well, we have seen London sitting in a capsule of London Eye, from the roof of Tate Modern, from the Sky Garden, and even from the walkway above the...
One of the public art projects that I still remember are the Book benches of 2014 which was a mesmerizing marriage of literature, art, and public space. In a summer where stories spilled into the streets and books took the shape of benches, London became a living library—inviting everyone to pause, perch, and fall back...
Walking around London and suddenly stumbling upon a pub in a cobbled lane and told a timeless tale and of unwritten toasts can convince anyone of the sort of spell that this city can cast over anyone. Our spooky encounter with unwritten histories in a hidden pub happened a few years back during one of...
London is a city where even randomness looks like art. I’d call this city the birthplace of moody Instagram aesthetics. I have found empty beer cans thrust upside-down between the planks of a bench in a park and the first thought that came to my mind was – is this a modern commentary on post-industrial...
One day the sun was up. Warm and sunny, Chorused all Londoners. Another day it was raining again in London. The kind of rain that doesn’t pour but lingers – soft, stubborn, and gray like an old coat that doesn’t fit but keeps you warm. The streets were slick with it. The pavements mirrored the...
In the nineties, when Pushkin was a small boy, we always rushed up the stairs to the top deck and the front seats. We have fallen in love with London as seen from the second deck. These scarlet spirits of the city gave us a million stories to remember. Even today we love to go...
We have watched the London skyline transform from a huddle of Victorian buildings to a reimagined architectural language that is bold, angular, glass-faced, and gleaming. I am talking of the period between the mid-nineties and now. London appears to be trickily balanced between the words of Julia Morgan (“Architecture is a visual art, and the...
It was in York in 1985 that I first came across a lollipop lady. This happened on one day when we had gone to pick up Pushkin from his school – Fishergate Primary. Two of the mothers whom Specky, my wife, was able to identify, were wearing yellow fluorescent jackets with reflective strips and they...
‘The keeper of all the secrets’ is now displayed in the Queen’s House at the Royal Museums Greenwich. This place is oozing with history, art, and artifacts collected from all over the world. Well, Shashi Tharoor might have preferred the expression ‘looted from the colonies’ but then many of those displayed here are created by...
London takes a determined step towards issues that trouble the world. Every time… besides the times the city’s political hub wants to kowtow to the Americans, I’d add. This isn’t an analysis of the political hues that often submerge the city’s features. This essay is about an issue that jumps out of the water into...
