An excess of frippery and indulgence

With its lavish design and whimsical appearance, ‘Taste’ feels like an overpriced plaything, not a deep dive into an idea

- Somak Ghoshal

A still from the movie, The Great Indian Kapil Show

If there were a Met Gala for books, Taste (conceptualised by journalist Lakshmi Chaudhry and published by Juggernaut) would have undoubtedly turned heads on the red carpet.

Retailing at ₹15,000, this set of two hefty volumes comes in a peachy-pink cardboard shell. Once you’ve unboxed the cargo, the oversized books—one edited by Chaudhry, the other by designer Tania Singh Khosla—are embellished with bells and whistles serious enough to give competition to Cardi B’s costume this year.

For not only is each volume of Taste heavily illustrated, the images also come in a variety of forms: embossed, gold-tinted, as cut-outs, poster folds, meant to be viewed through multi-coloured lenses, and full of quaint quirks that would gladden the heart of anyone invested in the book as a decorative object rather than a medium of intellectual engagement. Taste is not meant to live on shelves; it is meant to be displayed on a bespoke coffee table, preferably made by a Japanese master carpenter, considering the limited edition of 500 copies that have been released.

Indeed, exclusivity is the calling card for Taste. In her introduction, Chaudhry informs the reader that this anthology will be an annual project. The idea behind it is to rebel against the algorithm-driven markers of taste that social media platforms keep pushing on to our feeds. Taste aims to serve as a counterpoint to the flattening homogeneity of our desires, creating a pocket of reprieve in a world perpetually distracted.