The Sunday Paper: Wonderfully Wonky Issue

Editing, Production, Commissioning, Writing, Interviewing, Printing and Delivery.

The Sunday Paper is a quarterly broadsheet published by Desmond & Dempsey. It celebrates indulgence, slowness, adventure and freedom, and for our seventh issue we focus on the joy to be found in the unpredictability of life. Here you’ll find my Editor’s letter, along with some of my favourite images from the issue.

Read the full issue here.

One of the joys of creating The Sunday Paper is the unpredictability of it all. Though we always start out with a plan, we sometimes end up running into unexpected bumps in the road that lead us somewhere entirely different. Usually somewhere even better than expected.

Hearing the D&D founders’ often hilarious stories from their inspiration-gathering trip to India, we learned that in the production of this issue, things couldn’t be expected to run smoothly. Pyjamas might not turn up, messages might get lost in translation.  Magically though, every word of our briefs were understood and UPS didn’t let us down once! 

However, we soon realised we were in for another kind of bump in the road for Issue 7. A global pandemic-shaped bump which delayed the issue’s launch by over a month, by which time a large chunk of our Very Very Fine Collection had already been snapped up and sent to new homes! Luckily, the aim of The Sunday Paper is not to sell pyjamas. It’s a space to celebrate community, creativity and collaboration, and to tell the stories of people who inspire us. 

As rumours of a lockdown began to swirl, we spoke with Arpana Rayamajhi, a New York-based jeweller and artist whose Nepali culture informs and inspires her collections. She told us about learning to love and embrace her Nepali heritage in an increasingly Americanised society.  She spoke of the joys of working with her hands to create jewellery in kaleidoscopic colours and shapes, and the influence of pop culture and rock n’ roll on all facets of her life as a creative chameleon.

Things started getting a little stickier in the news, and we were hearing more and more about travel being discouraged and flights being cancelled. One of these cancelled flights was that of our photographer, due to fly to Jaipur to shoot our next tastemakers, Siddharth and Samarth Kasliwal. Luckily, another friend, Pietro Pasolini, was visiting the Pink City and came to our rescue. He met the brothers at their family jewellery store, Gem Palace, and snapped them in their favourite evening spot on the shop’s roof terrace.  We spoke with Sid and Sam about brotherhood and friendship, taking over a family business that has been running for centuries, and the stories behind India’s most precious stones.

Within a few weeks, and several days before we were due to meet our final tastemaker, Waris Ahluwalia, doors were closed. Both Waris and our photographer had escaped to upstate New York (separately!) to avoid the chaos of the Big Apple. At this point, we thought we might be out of luck. 

However, in a time of ultimate unknowns, bringing together this issue of The Sunday Paper has taught me some very important personal lessons. As a lover of timeliness, the delayed responses from our contributors as they, very reasonably, prepared for lockdown filled me with dread; dread that we would end up with a paper of empty pages. 

But what I now realise is that when things don’t go quite as planned, there is always an alternative. A little waiting around helped me to relax my sometimes rigid respect for a hard deadline and appreciate how creative projects need space, time, and a gentle touch to bear the ripest of fruits. You might need a couple of days to mull over the options, but chances are, you’ll land on the ONE. The new and often stronger, more original ONE than the ONE that went tits-up. Despite all my fears, answers trickled in slowly but surely. It taught me that being forced to exercise my patience muscle from time to time really isn’t such a bad thing, especially when rewarded with fascinating, thoughtful stories from deeply inspirational people.

Take, for example, handing the reins over to Waris. We posted him a polaroid camera and his chosen pair of pyjamas and he orchestrated his very own shoot, one that captured his personality and unmissable creativity more than we ever could have ourselves. We ended up with the most wonderful, colourful, unique photography to accompany our conversation about his birthplace, India, his home, New York, and his journey to launching his tea brand, House of Waris Botanicals. Or even calling upon my favourite food-and-drink-adjacent podcasters, the Sophies (Roberts and McComas) who willingly swooped in to save the day with their ultimate drink recommendations and hangover cures when our contributors from India weren’t available.

After excited to-ing and fro-ing by email with this issue’s food columnist, Sana Javeri Kadri, the founder of spice company Diaspora Co., we got nothing. For days we crossed our fingers that she would resurface, and to my great relief, after sliding into her DMs, she did. She had been a little preoccupied packing up her life in Mumbai and getting on the last available flight to the US to seek refuge in her second home in Oakland. Once we eventually pinned her down, she and our food writer Serafina Logiacco had the most honest and eye opening conversation about the challenges of starting a business as a queer woman in India, showing up and putting in the hard yards to gain your collaborators’ trust and commitment, and the ultimate exercise in going with the flow.  In Sana’s case, it was putting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product into a shipping container and waiting for it to float to the doorstep. 

From these bumps in the road, the results of unpredictable kismet forces, immense creativity and collaboration have poured in. We have worked together more than ever to bring you a paper we are proud of, with stories of awe-inspiring artists and entrepreneurs, who will no doubt provide you with some inspiration for your future adventures. There are opinion pieces to make you stop and think about the privilege of movement, of going with the flow when things don’t quite go your way, and the thrill of not knowing what life has in store for you. You’ll also read about the ritual and magic of a cup of morning chai, and we share reviews from our first ever book club on Jacqueline Woodson’s Red At The Bone. 

What has made me the proudest in the creation of our wonderfully wonky issue is the honesty, creativity, passion, and patience at the heart of each of our features.  Not just in the words they’ve shared, but their willingness and excitement to be a part of the paper I love making so much, and the generosity and care in our own private conversations. Despite being in the wonkiest and most uncertain of times, the shimmering, glimmering qualities in people have shone right through. I hope that you can feel that as you read through these pages.