I have had the pleasure of speaking at the Department of Design, University of Hyderabad, on October 30, 2024, as part of their Design Lecture Series 2024. I shared my photography project on the downstream effects of the Green Revolution in Punjab, and on working on long-term projects set in rural India.

IKEA built a global empire selling affordable furniture that people assembled themselves. For its first store in India, the Swedish retailer is upending its business model.
The India store, set to open next month in the southern city of Hyderabad, will feature IKEA’s first in-house furniture-assembly team, with 150 full-time employees. IKEA created the optional service after research indicated many Indians would be unlikely to buy bookshelves and tables they had to screw together.
The store also will have items tailored for Indian preferences, such as lunchbox sets to carry multiple-course meals, pans to cook Indian flatbread, and mattresses containing coconut fibers, which many Indians find cooling. The outlet’s 1,000-seat restaurant will be IKEA’s biggest to date, serving samosas and biryani as well as Swedish meatballs made with chicken or vegetables because most Indians don’t eat beef or pork.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to work on this story on IKEA Hyderabad for The Wall Street Journal with photo editor Stephanie Aaronson. Read the piece here.

Looking for a quick cup of chai after a walk around the Yousufain Dargah in Hyderabad’s Nampally locality, I spotted a brightly painted cafe occupying a part of an old building adjacent to the dargah. As I walked in, wondering if they also served Irani chai at what looked more like a small restaurant, I almost missed the group of men sitting on their haunches by the door. The sight was intriguing, for many of the men seemed to be dressed reasonably well to be beggars and their backs against the road confirmed they were not daily labourers either.

I asked one of the waiters at the cafe about them and he said they’re all waiting for coupons. I turned to the kid filling in for his father at the cash counter to elaborate.

The cafe (also a few others near by) offers food coupons to devotees looking to pay obeisance at the dargah. Sold in denominations of Rs.16, 20 and 30, a devotee can buy as many coupons as he likes and distribute them among the poor and hungry milling around the dargah. The coupons, which never expire, can be exchanged for a hot and fresh meal any time of the day between 7AM and 10PM. The menu varies on the value of the coupon but ‘customers’ can choose between Roti, Naan, Salan and Dal Rice and enjoy it seated on any of the tables inside, along with other regular customers.

Devotees can also choose to buy meals at the cafe itself, for which there is always a sizeable crowd waiting outside. “They can choose to feed all of them, just a few of them or even more, in which case we offer free meals to anyone walking later without a coupon,” explained Mohammed Khalid, the owner of the cafe whom I met later. The Yousufain Shehzad Hotel was established by his father, who also happened to be an avid bodybuilder and Haji, seventy years ago. The walls of the cafe are filled with photos of Mecca, his father from his bodybuilding days, a framed receipt of a donation to the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in 1978 and an enlarged news report about the hotel that appeared in The Hindu in 2012.

A devotee just bought meals for twenty-five people and a waiter went outside holding a stick in his hand and let the people waiting outside in, counting them with the stick. The waiters quickly asked the people for their meal preferences and brought them the food they wanted, with all the respect they would extend to a regular customer.

The group finished their meals in ten minutes, the waiters cleaned the place up and the next set of people walked in less than five minutes. A kid had asked Khalid for a badusha, a sweet placed in a huge tray on the cash counter, and he immediately gave him a piece. I offered to pay for it but he refused. “it is our duty to give them whatever they want, saab!”

The Hasya Yoga Club, a motley group of businessmen and professionals, meets at the KBR National Park in the heart of Hyderabad everyday with a singular purpose- to laugh. Between 6:30 and 7 in the morning, members of the group assemble at a small patch of open space inside the park and after a brief stretching session, laugh in different ways.  Like a lion, for example, though I dont recall seeing a lion laughing in all those Nat Geo and Animal Planet shows on TV. But I digress. All was well until the state Forest Department, concerned that the unnatural sounds made by the group might disturb the whatever few birds and animals that are left inside the park, ordered them to laugh elsewhere.

The club approached the AP High Court and got a stay  issued on the Forest Department’s order, following which OPEN wanted to do a small story. After almost a week of unanswered phone calls and pointless trips to the park, I got to photograph the group during one of their sessions. Interestingly the park’s entry ticket says ‘laughing and making noises inside the National Park individually or in groups is prohibited.’

Read the story by Anil Lulla here.