Riddhi Dastidar

My friends and I are in our mid-thirties to forties. We've achieved a reasonable level of career-success, self-knowledge and skills at this point. Also the requisite hopes and heartbreaks of relationships that ended, sometimes in terribly traumatic ways, sometimes in cruelly ordinary discontent or distance. I know only a handful of people who have no desire for romantic companionship. This desire for a happily-ever-after, drummed into us by societal expectations and/or the human longing for ro

Dear readers, I've just returned from Kochi where I taught an art-writing workshop for the Biennale, then spent a week trying to cram in as much art, food, and coast as I could. I'll make up for the tardiness of February's dispatch with March's newsletter before the end of the month. After the neat box-square of February, March feels like a long month. Like the year has really kicked into its rhythm, and there's much to be done. In Delhi the temperature is still bearable indoors thank god,...

The longest month is over, long live the longest month. Dear friend, how was your January? This one sped by for me. I was in Dhaka for Chobi Mela (Asia's oldest international biennale of photography begun in 2000 by Shahidul Alam) for some of it, and preparing to leave before that. So it feels like going to the gym and going to Dhaka consumed my month. I'm back in Delhi now, just in time for India Art Fair; returning from Chobi Mela to this, to likely Kochi next month, is making me feel...