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Tanya Mehta profile imageTanya Mehta

The great indoors are cool again, and here’s how your Saturday night can look a whole lot different.

Urban India is ditching nights out at noisy bars for smaller living-room experiences

The great indoors are cool again, and here’s how your Saturday night can look a whole lot different

While trying to strike a balance between a challenging work life and a demanding personal one, the way we interact, socialise and perceive leisurely activities has changed. When the idea of spending a Saturday evening routinely involves restaurant hopping or attending boiler room gigs crammed with people, it’s perhaps time to consider the novel opportunity of a curated living room experience. Spanning food, music and immersive theatre, a handful of initiatives emerging across urban India are shaping the way we spend our time with others—both friends and strangers—switching eventful evenings outside with intimate ones indoors. 

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"This is a place where people come as strangers and leave with each other’s phone numbers. And if the conversations take over the music, I know it's been a true success,” says Anurag Arora

Food for thought  

A full-time designer with a knack for cooking, Bengaluru-based Anurag Arora was curious to create a fresher experience when it came to food. After whipping up a delicious take-away menu during the pandemic, he went to London to train at several kitchens, soon earning a quiet reputation amongst friends and acquaintances for the dinner parties he hosted on his terrace.“ I thought of making this a ticketed event and opening my home to people I don't know. However, the minute somebody is paying for an experience, you’re instantly exposed to a more critical eye and the pressure is high,” he shares. 

Arora first introduced the playful offering of Fried Chicken & Flowers, a hearty gourmet chicken sandwich with Chinese influences. A natural progression of this concept was The Brunch Club. “I personally love brunch but commercially it's overdone and most menus are often limited to eggs and pancakes. I wanted to be innovative so I tried to have dishes like a comforting  Prawn Toast with a Sri Lankan curry sauce.” 

Arora’s final installment—and most decadent one yet—is The Apartment, a seven-course fine dining experience at a community table in his living room. Through a “borderless” menu, guests dig into dishes devised with Asian-Italian influences. “Each course has the underscore of being delicious—that's the only commonality. One dish is just bread that is freshly baked in a wood fired oven served with young butter, influenced by my childhood in Punjab. Cabbage often has a bad rep. I wanted to alter this notion and so I served it in the form of noodles with sesame and egg yolk sauce,” explains Arora.

A few editions in, these dinners, announced on Arora’s Instagram account, were  now sold out almost immediately

A few editions in, these dinners, announced on Arora’s Instagram account, were  now sold out almost immediately

Patolios from home chef Shubhra Shakhwalker's Goa From Home

Patolios from home chef Shubhra Shakhwalker's Goa From Home

A holistic sense of thoughtfulness and attention to detail extends to the decor and surroundings too. The mood is amplified by Jazz on the turntable, while servers and the kitchen crew are in custom-made uniforms and aprons.  Equal attention is paid to the table setting and illustrated labels on wine bottles. A few editions in, these dinners, announced on Arora’s Instagram account, were  now sold out almost immediately. “How do you retain the best aspects of fine dining but also let go off the pretense? By creating something exciting yet approachable. When you come into my home you're served on mismatched plates from my travels, my computer table is in sight as are my photo frames. This is a place where people come as strangers and leave with each other’s phone numbers. And if the conversations take over the music, I know it's been a true success,” says Arora. 

Miles away from Arora’s living room in Bengaluru is a sleepy, sun-drenched farm in Camurlim, Goa belonging to home chef Shubhra Shakhwalker. Her venture Goa From Home aptly encapsulates the sense of slowness embraced by the Goans. Her speciality is Gaud Saraswat Brahmin cuisine, one not known to, or partaken, by many. Influenced by the forgotten recipes of her mother-in-law, Shankwalker quit her job as a full-time graphic designer to curate meals for enthusiasts looking to get a taste of something home-made with flavours of the south. The concept is simple—there is no menu presented in advance, guests arrive to a surprise meal cooked according to the availability of fresh catch and locally sourced ingredients. “It's inspired by how my grandparents used to cook. The ingredients are purchased on the morning of the meal and cooked slowly over the day—nothing is frozen,” she shares. The spread includes stuffed mackerel, chicken Xacuti, moongachi gathi and vade, all cooked in coconut oil and kokum that is sourced from the very farm. “ I want to keep this experience as real as possible. I only cook when I’m in the right frame of mind so as to create thoughtfully, unrushed. Most people visit us through word of mouth; it's about a heartfelt meal cooked at home, without the frills and hype.”

When people are invited for Unshared Childhoods, they wouldn’t experience an evening of regular theatre-watching

When people are invited for Unshared Childhoods, they wouldn’t experience an evening of regular theatre-watching

To a different tune  

For those who don’t want to be jostled in a large crowd at music festivals or pay for overpriced cocktails, a cosy home concert might be the antidote. In Mumbai, musician and singer Sarthak Karkare brings multifaceted music into people’s living rooms. His solo Hindi project Maqta is vastly influenced by his childhood, one that was chock full of retro Bollywood tunes, ghazals and Hindustani classical music, and watching films from the 1950s-90s, all peppered with relatable storytelling of existential crises. The singer’s primary reason for a small-scale performance was purely psychological. “I wanted the listener to feel the sheer depth of the lyrics in conjunction with the music, and this would not be possible in settings that thrived on listeners being inebriated and scattered, as they commonly are at public venues. The live performances are incredibly cathartic and emotionally charged, and that is precisely why I opted for a home concert setting,” shares Karkare. 

With a bit of luck and immense support from friends, Karkare was able to gradually develop a network of hosts across cities in India who generously opened their homes to audiences spanning teenagers to the elderly. By cutting out the middleman, this format has also proven to be both artistically and financially viable for the independent artist. 

“A home concert becomes a little island of change, albeit a very powerful one. And this is mainly because of the direct and organic engagement it allows, both for the artist and the audience. Neither the strengths nor the weaknesses of the artist can be glossed over or covered with a sanitised social media veneer in such a circumstance. Whatever has to be conveyed is ultimately very raw and real,” he shares. 

Narratives that bind  

When people are invited for Unshared Childhoods, they wouldn’t experience an evening of regular theatre-watching. The interactive performance piece is the brainchild of Mumbai-based theatre-maker and director Tanvi Shah. “During my training at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018, we were asked to create an original piece of work. My instinct was to make something that is felt, something emerging from a complex thought yet understandable. How do I make a collective active imagination to bring out kindness and empathy? I try to make most of my work multi-sensorial—there's always an interactive component based on communicating and engagement,” she says. 

Unshared Childhoods, the interactive performance piece is the brainchild of Mumbai-based theatre-maker and director Tanvi Shah

Unshared Childhoods, the interactive performance piece is the brainchild of Mumbai-based theatre-maker and director Tanvi Shah

In Mumbai, musician and singer Sarthak Karkare brings multifaceted music into people’s living rooms

In Mumbai, musician and singer Sarthak Karkare brings multifaceted music into people’s living rooms

The audience-led piece witnesses guests read out unsent letters written by strangers across the world. In the warmth of a living room, participants recite these personal stories of love, grief and loss to the tunes of live music composed specifically for every letter. Movement artists create a visual landscape and present an additional layer of tangible presence while a deaf sign-language interpreter makes the experience accessible to the specially-abled.  

“I want theatre to become something we go to more frequently. This unconventional piece is designed for homes. The ambience often makes it feel like a family reunion in a place that is memoried and has history—not in a cold, sanitised black box. People are usually terrified about the interactive bit but this experience is about creating that intimacy. We don't get to interact with strangers in this capacity; it is a chance to move beyond small talk and niceties,” elaborates Shah. 

The letters run the gamut of voices, including a queer boy coming out to his ajji (grandmother) and the melancholic account of a Kashmiri woman whose lover has never made it to Kashmir. Through tears and laughter the audience is urged to show up for the stories of others. “We live such complex lives but we don't have enough space to talk about them. In a world that is increasingly divisive and living in silos, can you inhabit the skins and stories of others?” concludes Shah.

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