MC Recommends: Christmas markets across India, Gulabi chai in Kashmir and a tribute to Astad Deboo in Mumbai

After a break of three years, Christmas markets in India are back - and how. There is one in every city, but here are our picks: Mumbai’s Baro Market hosts a kick-ass Christmas Bazaar at Vintage Garden in Bandra. The setting is magical: an old bungalow that has survived a construction juggernaut. The collection is artisanal and handmade, as are all of Baros' products. In Goa, Westin Goa hosts an artisanal pre-Christmas market with homegrown Indian brands, from jewellery and clothes to food.

Goa is also host to many-a-Christmas market such as Makies Night Market that sells dazzling Christmas décor. Park Street, Kolkata, celebrates a three-day Christmas carnival with pop-up stores selling Christmas décor, sweets, and food, particularly Anglo-Indian delicacies.

Swiss watchmaker Carl F Bucherer’s new CFH Master Lab allows you to design your watch. You choose everything – from colour to material, and even how the dial looks. Visualise an art piece as the dial, or want the mechanics to show up on the dial, or just desire a classic dial? CFB Lab will work according to the watch connoisseur’s vision. Some customers are known to incorporate family secrets that no one else is privy to, into the interior of their watches, creating a timeless relationship with the pieces.

Okay, you may not be able to ‘make’ a watch. But if you want to experience what goes into the making of Jaipur Watch Company’s watches, with designs drawn from local arts such as Pichwai—or modern 3D printed watches—head to the brand’s new store and experiential space in Jaipur. The interiors—rich blue walls with golden gilt motifs, arches, and vintage wooden furniture—bring the state’s artisanal heritage into play. The watches are displayed in modern watch cupboards and shelves. You can browse through the classics, but you can also see how artisans embellish the watches to create modern timepieces using age-old art forms and even try your hand at painting some part of that dial if you are buying one.

Kashmir’s Noon Chai—also called Gulabi Chai—is a curious blend of unlikely ingredients: Gunpowder tea, which is kind of a green tea, milk, salt, and baking soda. It is made in a traditional Samovar. Once, you would have had to travel great distances or know people deep in Srinagar’s bastees to taste this tea. Now, you have cafes such as Chai Jaai—among the valley’s hip new openings — which serve a mean Noon.

Much like it is done traditionally, Chai Jaai brews the tea for hours in a Samovar before serving it. Enjoy it with Sheermal, a Kashmiri bread, and a view of the busy street.

Dancer Astad Deboo did not believe in boundaries, which is why he danced with almost everyone, from Manipuri folk dancers to Bolshoi Ballet and Pink Floyd. Paying tribute to his brand of experimentation, dance and collaboration is a new show in Mumbai. Breaking Boundaries at IF.BE gallery in Ballard Pier, looks at the life and times of Astad Deboo. The travelling exhibition, curated by Poulomi Das and designed by Shanoo Bhatia, who heads the multi-disciplinary design practice Eumo, has his dance costumes, the Kathakali costume in which he performed with Kathakali dancers, installations that allow audiences to read parts of Astad’s handwritten diaries, even an exhibit that allows visitors to recreate his performance Chewing Gum, pressing against stretchable textiles to create forms of their own. Explore the legacy of one of India’s greatest contemporary dancers through this exhibition.

Many of us who love art and grew up in Mumbai of yore will always remain indebted to the late Kekoo Gandhy’s Chemould Gallery, which introduced us to the best of Indian modern artists and their art. Now, a new book, Citizen Gallery: The Gandhy’s of Chemould and the Birth of Modern Art in Bombay, unfolds this rich history to us through its pages. The book takes us back to the 1940s when Kekoo Gandhy set up his picture-framing store on Princess Street and had some of our best modern artists visit it for their framing needs. He gave them space and opportunity to meet buyers at his expansive sea-fronted home in Bandra and his store, before setting up Chemould Gallery within The Jehangir Art Gallery. The journey from then, to now, when Chemould moved to an expansive space near CST—earlier named Victoria Terminus Station—and rebranded as Chemould Prescott Road, is captured by author Jerry Pinto’s Citizen Gallery, a biography of the Gandhys and Chemould Art Gallery, now a byword in the art world.

At DS Stud Farm in Tarakol on the Maharashtra-Goa border, you approach the resident horses a tad differently. The 15 Marwari horses, the most premium and royal of all horse breeds with roots in ancient Persian cultures and India’s Rajasthan—are impeccably groomed and beautifully looked after.

Here, as a traveller or someone on a day out, you can take one-off, or regular, horse-riding classes, teach yourself some horsemanship, and learn how to groom them. You can brush them, feed them, bathe them, and, my favourite activity, paint them. The painting is for you to take home.

The adventures of young ninja Naruto Uzumaki have made their way onto Mont Blanc bags. The brand has collaborated with Naruto for the Montblanc x Naruto collection of writing instruments, accessories, leather goods, and smartwatches.

The Naruto series has sold 250 million copies in 46 countries. The collection is embellished with heart-warming and inspiring moments that define the relationship between Naruto and an older Jiraiya, a hermit and mentor to the young hero, all set on a black background. The pieces feature bold orange design elements that evoke brush strokes, ink drops, and calligraphy-style symbols associated with the art of writing.