Lounge Loves: Concert fashion, plum cake and more

Girl Talk

Sophie Kinsella’s untimely death last week reminded me of a time when I devoured several of her books in a row. Although her Shopaholic series is the most popular, I was thinking of a stand-alone novel called Twenties Girl published in 2009. An unpretentious romp, the book is about a 20-something woman visited by the ghost of her great-aunt who tasks her with finding a long-lost necklace, the search for which unearths family secrets and, of course, leads to personal growth for the protagonist. Rifling through the book again, an unexpected connection with a Bengali novel (and its film adaptation) struck me: Goynar Baksho, a novella by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay and adapted by Aparna Sen, is also about two women from different generations, one dead and one living, connected by jewellery. Spooky, isn’t it?

—Shrabonti Bagchi

Nailing Concert Fashion

As someone who has made “concert fashion” compilations regularly, watching what people wear to a music gig or a festival has become second nature. Most years, there’s nothing much to write about because people look like they’ve either picked the most colourful outfit in their closet or the safest uniform of all-time: plain black tee and jeans. As I hit the Echoes of Earth music festival in Bengaluru last week, I was ready to be greeted by more of the same, but was I wrong! I had the best time checking out all the fashion—especially the men’s wear. The boys had cleaned up good. I sighted cow print pants, leather pants and vests, crocheted shirts and sleeveless corduroy jackets. All accompanied with spiffy hats and jewellery, but as the photo here shows, the best accessories were the cute pets.

– Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran

Let There Be Cake

Richly frosted, soft and rummy plum cakes from Nagerkoil’s Greatest Bakery were a regular part of childhood Christmases, a gift from a family friend. Once he passed and ordering them became harder (as the bakery only recently went online), we stopped buying Christmas cake because a large part of the joy came from the elderly gentleman’s visit with it. No other seemed as delicious, being either too dry, too tutti-frutti, or too moist. This year, a friend sent me a Mattanchery Spiced Matured Plum Cake from Kochi’s Pandhal cake shop, which seemed to replicate all those tastes—honeyed, rum-soaked fruit and spices, warm and rich softness, the result of months of infusion—and bring back memories of those childhood Christmases.

—Shalini Umachandran

Classic Moments

Long before the smartphone ruined my attention, I’ve always struggled to focus on movies that ran for hours. So, having signed up to watch Sholay, recently re-released on the big screen, I was worried about sitting for 3.5 hours in a theatre. But much to my delight, the minutes flew by. Although I had seen the movie on TV, the remastered audio and video made it feel as though I was watching it for the first time. I didn’t once feel the urge to peek into my phone. As the show ended around midnight, I stepped into the toxic Delhi air, comforted by the knowledge that classics, no matter how baggy and sprawling, haven’t lost their appeal in our age of instant gratification.

—Somak Ghoshal