Vivek Menezes is a widely published writer and photographer. He was born in Bombay, went to high school in New York, and holds degrees from Wesleyan University and the London School of Economics. Previous career highlights include driving the safari train at the Bronx Zoo, serving as Jacques Cousteau's personal economic advisor, and building Sachin Tendulkar's first official website. He lives in Goa with his wife and three sons. Email: vmingoa@gmail.com
by Vivek Menezes You won’t find the Truth By crossing your legs and holding your breath. Daydreams won’t take you through the gateway of release. You can stir as much salt as you like in water, It won’t become the sea. (by Lal Ded, translated by Ranjit Hoskote) My journey to Ziarat Dastgir Sahibun in…
by Vivek Menezes Nigeen Lake 27/05/2012 I am writing this lakeside in Srinagar, at the end of a month-long stay in this amazing, ancient city, along with my wife and three young sons (12, 8, 4). This is high season in Kashmir – the authorities expect as many as two million tourists by the time…
by Vivek Menezes This Saturday night, I attended one of the best concerts in my life. I’m trying to avoid all hyperbole here, honest. Also it’s not like I haven’t been around – my 3-decade concert resume includes Jobim in Rio, Springsteen in New Jersey, Aida in Luxor, and – some of you might recall…
by Vivek Menezes There’s something deeply rotten about the way the international cultural phenomenon known as Modernism is studied, everywhere in the world. And everyone in the know realizes that we are fast approaching a tipping point that will entirely upturn the global narrative. This has been an international problem for a long time, because…
by Vivek Menezes Not a single decade has passed, yet the circumstances of Francis Newton Souza’s last years already seem inconceivable. I’ve been stewing about this since coverage of the death of “Nudist painter Lucian Freud” inexplicably spread across the Indian press right into my morning papers here, a media backwater that is by far…
by Vivek Menezes It’s 1am, pouring heavily on an overcast monsoon night, and I’ve been waiting to talk to Sebastiao Frias for almost two hours. But he’s still elbow-deep in his work, dusted from brow to toes in wheat flour, and moving with the distinctive balletic grace that master craftsmen acquire after decades of practice.…
by Vivek Menezes Look, the fact is that cricket barely qualifies as an international sport. There are a billion and a half subcontinentals who’ve been fed cricket, cricket and more cricket for decades – the very definition of a captive audience – so there’s steady interest here. But look beyond, and we’re talking a very…
by Vivek Menezes Our first glimpse of Lou Majaw comes just outside the Guwahati airport – his face is building-sized, emblazoned high above the multi-lane expressway to Meghalaya, on an advertisement for Star Cement. These billboards turn out to be ubiquitous along our route. By the time we’ve wound our way up from the Brahmaputra…
In the third week of November in 2004, I dialed up to the Internet on a cellphone for the first time, then actively searched for blogs to read and bookmark. Though six years have passed, I clearly recall the first post I read through on 3quarksdaily.com. It was this one, a brief report after a…