Sunday Long Reads: Vijay Varma in the limelight, Sunny Leone on shedding the adult entertainer tag, and more

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Mumbai’s Masque is number 16 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. What makes it stand apart?

Chocolate Fudge, Walnut

A starter made using three kinds of corn greets us soon after we take our seats: its crunchy base is a purple corn cracker, topped with a creamy mousse of sweet corn and surrounded by charred baby corn cut into delicate circles to form a flower on the plate. Paired with this is a dish featuring two fried water chestnuts — known popularly as singhara and consumed in northern India as a summer fruit — seasoned with mild red paprika and served whole.

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The mystery of the musical magpie robin

Oriental magpie robin (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Many summers ago, in Goa, I woke up very early one morning to a lovely flute recital by a tuxedo-ed magpie robin. Of course, I grumbled – I was on holiday, but hey, this was a maestro at work, so I kept shut and listened. I soon discovered that he had more than one composition in his repertoire and would change the venue of his recital from time to time: from one building to the next, to the trees at the back of the garden and so on. Yes, I knew that most gentlemen birds sang to declare to other gentlemen that they were alive and well and that they had better stay away from this area if they knew what was good for them. They also sang their hearts out to woo a fair lady, which our gentlemen in question had successfully done. I saw the happy pair grub around for insects and worms in the garden later in the morning. But why the multiple compositions? In a book on birdsong the reason became clear. Some gentlemen birds apparently sang different numbers from the same general area pretending to be more than one gentleman, trying to claim a property perhaps larger than what he really needed (like so many people we know). Any other gentleman would think, “Hey, I can challenge and fight perhaps one guy, but not two or three!” And so, stay away.

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‘I tried to be dignified through the entire process’: Sunny Leone on her journey, getting rid of adult entertainer tag

Sunny Leone spoke to The Indian Express a day after Kennedy’s buzzy midnight premiere at Cannes. (Photo: Tomas Moucka)

Indian actors on the Cannes red carpet representing global fashion brands are a familiar sight. But walking that most glamorous stretch of the Croisette, as part of an officially selected film, is a rare thing. And that’s exactly what Sunny Leone, as part of Anurag Kashyap’s noir thriller Kennedy, managed to do at the recent 76th edition of the festival.

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A series of history books in Bengali is attempting to make concepts of partition, citizenship and linguistic politics accessible to middle graders

Illustrations by Patachitra artists Ranjit and Sirajuddaulah Chitrakar for the series that explores issues such as borders, Partition and linguistic politics (Courtesy: Itihashe Hatekhori Project)

Hasina Bhanu was put on the D-Voter or Doubtful Voter list for the first time in 1997. A resident of Assam, she had come under suspicion as a “foreigner” or an infiltrator, whose unenviable status disqualified her for that basic right of all citizens — her vote. After running from pillar to post with documentation that showed her family’s generational roots in India, Bhanu would finally be put off the list nearly two decades later, in 2016. But her relief was short-lived. Five years later, she would again be labelled a foreigner and put in a detention camp in Tezpur Jail, where she would spend two nerve-wracking months before being released.

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When Bappi Lahiri meets K-pop

K-pop idol Aoora wants to bring Indian and Korean cultures together through his music.

Among the many songs that have travelled the world and made everyone dance to its tunes is Bappi Lahiri’s widely popular Jimmy Jimmy aaja aaja, be it for parties or as protest music. Lifted from French pop duo Ottawan’s T’es ok, Lahiri’s song was given a pop-electro spin by British artist M.I.A in 2007. And now, from South Korea is artiste Park min Jun aka Aoora, who throws in a K-pop mix.

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