Verve People

As bottled water companies continue to remove beneficial, naturally present minerals and nutrients through “purifying” processes, Lakshitaa Khanna has made it her business to learn everything she can about water’s varying flavours, textures and other properties, which are surprisingly complex. She talks to us about how she ended up in this unconventional profession and the importance of going back to the source
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Melancholic and melodic, Shantanu Pandit’s new music is the perfect antidote to these fraught times. Marked with advanced maturity folded over a keen sense of awareness and authenticity – it has the potential to cut across age groups, from adolescents through to those in their mid-thirties. But within them, the prime takers for his debut album Milk Teeth may just be the adamant romantics seeking comfort in a past innocence after “adulting” and looking to view the world anew, much like Pandit
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Movie prosthetics artist Zuby Johal uses innovative make-up techniques and can scare the wits out of you…. She also displays an innate love of fashion, with the desire to extend her expertise in working with silicone to the clothing and lifestyle sectors…
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Urban citizens and proponents of the organic food movement are largely unaware of their proximity to legislation that threatens to leave the farmers who keep their plates filled without livelihoods. While shifting closer to the source is desirable in theory, customers of sustainable endeavours first need to fully understand the consequences of their choices and demands
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Malayalam novelist, screenwriter and short story author Unni R opens a window into his inner world
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Keertida Phadke’s decision to forsake a well-paying job in marketing for a course at a plant-based culinary school in New York seemed risky to her friends and family, but the Natural Gourmet Institute (NGI) alumnus stands by her decision. In the middle of expanding her vegan brand, Better, the 34-year-old founder speaks to Verve about her culinary education, how it helped her corner the retail space in India and the pay-off of having undergone such specialised training at a time when the food industry is in limbo
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Acoustic consultant and architect Buland Shukla believes in living a life less ordinary
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For the co-owner of Goa’s Edible Archives, the mundane bottle gourd deserves the same culinary riffing as the now-trendy amaranth; in her kitchen, every ingredient is king, nurtured by the context of the earth from which it came. The affable chef spends a day with Verve and orchestrates a market-to-table experience that has her inimitable stamp
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Verve pays tribute to India’s legendary costume designer – with inputs from peers, colleagues and fans…. 
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The art of embroidery has conventionally been associated with domesticity – the unenticing fate awaiting girls supposedly without other ambitions. While the practice is still a relaxing pastime, a contemporary resurgence is seeing women reclaim that archaic narrative and even quitting more lucrative career paths to take on needlework full-time. We speak to Anuradha Bhaumick, whose visually complex pieces (featured on her Instagram account Hooplaback Girl – yes, a pun on the Gwen Stefani song) represent idyllic scenes from the lives of book lovers like herself
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We check in with Urshita Saini as her Delhi-based business, Momma Story, resumes operations and adapts to the changes in the field brought on by the pandemic
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Four 30-something mothers share their thoughts about keeping their professional and family lives on track during the pandemic as they grapple with the disproportionate burden of responsibility placed on them
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