Anushka Basu Seth

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance.... To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple..." This is excellent: themarginalian.org/2025/09/11/aru…

@IndiGo6E flight 6E 6768 (PNR HY9VNA) GOI–DEL is delayed by 10+ hrs. Plan B isn’t working, website won’t cancel, customer care is unreachable, airport staff didn’t help no response to email — Case No: 28497406. As per DGCA rules, I’m entitled to a full refund. Plz resolve asap.

Following last night’s attack on Kyiv, our office has been severely damaged and is closed to visitors until further notice. Sadly, one of our guards was injured and is now in hospital. While responses may be delayed, our work with 🇺🇦 partners in education and culture continues.

The #StudyUKAlumniAwards are here! 🏆 Tonight, we celebrate outstanding UK alumni making a global impact. Stay tuned for inspiring stories, unforgettable moments and big wins! ✨ @StudyUKBritish @GREATBritain #StudyUK #HE

I dropped into the British Council Delhi office on Friday to share some Masala chai with the amazing team and had a chance to catch up on all the work we are doing connecting the UK and India. It's been a great couple of weeks with a royal visit, the Jaipur literary festival and rapidly strengthening partnerships across universities. On Saturday, we had a little look around Delhi.

"Rafa has never broken a racket in his life. I once told him, 'You throw one racket and I’m no longer your coach'. There are millions of kids in the world who can't afford to buy one." - Toni Nadal ♥️

Rafa Nadal will end his career with an almost unbelievable record at Roland Garros. 112 wins, 4 losses. 14 titles. His dominance at this tournament transcended tennis itself. It is arguably the most dominant any athlete has ever been at any given arena in any sport. An untouchable legacy. 🇪🇸❤️🇪🇸

This story made me weep - have a read. Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. nytimes.com/2024/09/13/sty…

Thank you @BritishArts @inBritish for the scholarship you gave in 1993 to study in the UK played one of the most important roles in Changing my life.

@AmbarishSatwik @Indian_Accent I had the worst experience at @Indian_Accent last month! Everything from the service, food, drink, value for money - all a disaster! I would never recommend it to anyone, ever! What a disastrous experience. Walked away feeling utterly cheated.

A tirade. Against @Indian_Accent, Delhi’s much-lauded temple of gastronomy, where the well-heeled and the well-fed go to stroke their palates with innovation. A couple of days back, they were found peddling a culinary sleight of hand.   The offending dish, an offering on the tasting menu, promised morel, water chestnut, and asparagus, hidden beneath a ‘paper roast dosai’ (Exhibit A). One is always excited at the prospect of encountering a well-sourced morel, the truffle of the East—that decadent jewel from from the forests of J & K that costs more than an Indian family’s grocery bill for half a month. What arrived under the dosa cone, was not the morel, but a drab cluster of the most ordinary button mushrooms, the kind one might expect in a roadside stir-fry, the fungal equivalent of a counterfeit handbag. If you’re going to list morels on the menu, then there better be morels on the plate, not the fungal detritus scraped from the bottom of a vegetable box (Exhibit B).   This wasn’t an error. It was a deliberate act of chicanery. A calculated decision. Someone in the kitchen, or perhaps in the higher echelons of the restaurant, took it upon themselves to substitute the expensive morel with a far cheaper imposter, fully believing that these particular patrons, who probably didn’t look like the sort to have tasted morel before, wouldn’t know the difference.   When summoned, the chef performed the customary song-and-dance of apology, claiming he would ‘fix it in under two minutes.’ And he did. Miraculously. Brought in a new plate, flush with morels. Which begs the question—how is a fine dining restaurant able to replace a dish in less time than it takes me to open a bottle of cheap plonk? Pre-prepared, perhaps? If this kitchen is churning out dishes with all the haste of an airport lounge buffet, then what exactly are the patrons paying for? The pomp? The pretense? At this price point, we are not paying for mere food, but for integrity, for the understanding that what is stated on the menu is what will arrive on the plate. When a fine dining restaurant offers morel and serves common mushrooms, they are engaging in outright theft. Ordinarily, I’d let such an infraction slide. If it were some second-rate restaurant peddling Instagram-friendly fusion fare, I’d roll my eyes and quietly consign it to the bin of forgettable meals. But this is the restaurant that Condé Nast Traveller, in a flight of wild, hyperventilating praise, swears is the very best in all of India. It’s nestled comfortably on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list, ranked #26—an achievement it brandishes like a Michelin star. Time Magazine calls it one of the 'World's 100 Greatest Places' The question that naturally arises from this regrettable sleight of hand is: who, precisely, stands to benefit from this deception? Who profits from swapping out the Rolls-Royce of fungi for the rusted banger of button mushrooms? Certainly not the kitchen staff, who, I imagine, are too busy executing their preordained choreography to engage in such duplicity. Nor, I suspect, the serving staff, who would have to nervously deliver these imposters to tables, hoping against hope that no discerning palate calls foul. The chefs? Perhaps, but not in any way that bolsters their culinary pride. They’re not stashing a wad of cash in their aprons or taking home the saved morels. My sense is that their hands are tied by those behind the curtain. To call this ‘cheap and petty’ would be charitable.

@nishatriaz luckiest human!

Working from Hunza looks like this. Happy Monday!

Obligatory delightful picture with our lovely CEO @McDonaldScott_ !

An incredible 1,197 school pupils from across England are taking part in educational tours of #China to improve their Mandarin-speaking skills and cultural awareness. It's the most ambitious international school trip of its kind - part of the @MEP_Excellence programme.

Andy Murray’s tribute video for his final Wimbledon today made me cry. What a brilliant player. A world class player. Truly one of a kind. A symbol for every underdog in this world. So much love for @andy_murray ❤️

All heart for @andy_murray 💜

@Kaurgeographer sending you love, always

Another chapter ends today as my mother handed over our family’s and my papa’s most beloved and very aged Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji for sanskar at our local gurdwara sahib 🥹 💔

@Kaurgeographer proud of you, @kaurgeographer! 💜

Something to offset the bad mood this morning (just received in the mail). So grateful to have contributed a small chapter on #KashmiriSikhs to this important volume on #Kashmir after 2019, alongside some brilliant humans.

Today marks 1,000 days since the Taliban banned teenage girls from school in Afghanistan. I’ll be talking about this tonight on the show with Nobel Peace Prize laureate @Malala who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 after campaigning for girls’ education in her own country. Join me at 2100. 📺🌍

Our #Dartmouth24s got a once-in-a-lifetime experience during their Commencement—pointers about tennis, and life, from @rogerfederer. Our Commencement coverage: bit.ly/4aZde7D

Happy birthday to the indomitable, brilliant and spirited @MattBurney00 ! There’s no one like your glorious self! We miss you 💜