Lounge Loves: The Looksmith, ‘Thudarum' and more

Mint

12-05-2025

It's the movie villains who give us the best dialogue. Whether it's Kitne Aadmi Thay from Sholay, Mr India's Mogambo Khush Hua, or Why So Serious? from The Dark Knight, these lines uttered with delicious menace by their antagonists have become iconic. Joining this pantheon of spine-chilling villainous lines is the simple Hello! that the character George Mathan utters in the Malayalam movie, Thudarum. Said with a barely there nasal twang and accompanied by a toothy grin, the 'Hello' seems disarming until it's not. Here's a villain who is as charming as a cobra and to give credit where it's due, it's ad filmmaker Prakash Varma who plays Mathan with incredible charm.
As an Indian man in my 40s, I can bet I'm not alone in being distressed by the changing contours of my body. On bad days, my disobedient waistline feels like a personal betrayal. Instead of reaching out for variety, I would veer towards dull 'unclewear', lifeless pinstripes and relaxed-fit trousers to look and feel age-appropriate. Until I discovered Parker York Smith, a Los Angeles-based men's fashion influencer. Every day, Smith styles unusual, eccentric looks based on popular requests. He is as good at sporting styles inspired by characters from the Super Mario Bros games as he is at styling a purple wedding suit for an adventurous groom. He doesn't do cosplay, nor is he peddling brands to make you shop. Smith can make even a white shirt, printed tee or loafers look classy. Bonus: his accessory game is absolutely on fire.
While growing up, glass bangles from Hanuman Mandir in Delhi were an integral part of most family weddings. I remember the intricately etched glass boxes that my grandmother would store those bangles in. Name a colour, and you could find a bangle in it. Recently, with a wedding in the family, I decided to revisit that memory and landed up at Hanuman Mandir to get some glass bangles. The vibrant array at the Babu Churiwala shop caught my eye—I ended up buying bangles for the entire family. The elderly owner added to the experience with his stories of Delhi of the 1970s-80s, when glass bangles would adorn many a wrist. A visit is strongly recommended for some gup-shup over tea and stories of bangles.
Paper usually holds language, the alphabets forming sentences and running across the surface to convey ideas, laws, policies, formulas, confessions, solutions. Artist Ravi Kumar Kashi turns this concept on its head by creating a delicate lace of letters cut from different kinds of paper, and suspending them from ceilings and walls, giving an altogether new weight to words. Kashi currently has a small show of six works, We Don't End at our Edges, on till mid-June at Bengaluru's Museum of Art and Photography, and it's entrancing. Scraps of Kannada poetry, literature, his own thoughts… everything is jumbled into these installations that are part sculpture, part tapestry. It's beautifully lit, too, and the shadows the installations cast have a vocabulary of their own.