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Last week, Amazon Publishing celebrated Sheila Yasmin Marikar’s new novel, Incidentals at SAAQI — the hidden cellar bar beneath Musaafer, Tribeca’s dazzling new Indian fine dining destination. If you’re wondering how a book party should be done, let Marikar show you.
The room drew an enviable cross-section of New York’s literary and cultural sets: reigning editrixes and rising Substack royalty, models, downtown it-girls, and because this is that kind of New York night, at least one Instagram witch.
Spotted among those doing the rounds: Adam Rathe of Town & Country, Sarah Khan of Condé Nast Traveler, author Liz Riggs, and Avery Carpenter Forrey, who held court in a corner. Daise Bedolla — fast becoming the reigning queen of beauty Substack — made an appearance, as did writer and essayist Iva Dixit alongside Aisha Rawji, founder of Kynah, the Indian fashion brand whose recent couture pop-up on Canal Street had the fashion set talking all week. Fitting company, really, for a novel about the kind of glamorous, complicated people who populate ultra-luxury resorts and each other’s lives in equal measure.
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At the center of it all was Marikar. If you needed reminding why, you only had to watch the room. The writer who has filled the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vogue more times than most of us have had a decent night’s sleep moved through SAAQI’s candlelit cellar with the composed, and amused air of someone who has interviewed everyone worth interviewing and learned, along the way, exactly how a room should feel. She signed books, lingered with guests, and shared stories with the easy warmth of a writer entirely in her element, which, to be clear, appears to be anywhere with good lighting and better company.
The evening’s appointed toastmaster was Aparna Shewakramani — breakout star of Indian Matchmaking — who raised a glass and saluted Marikar for “showing us how to live like a goddess,” a nod to her previous novel, The Goddess Effect. It landed, as these things do when they’re true. Marikar, for her part, thanked her guests simply: “a writer is nothing without her readers.”
Mermaid Gin supplied bespoke cocktails developed exclusively for the occasion, with a negroni inspired by the Incidentals cover emerging as the undisputed drink of choice. Favia wines indulged the less adventurous.
Danielle Oritz, a culinary editor was overheard applauding Musaafer founder Ishraat Randhawa on the exquisite canapés circulating throughout. Meanwhile on the other side of the bar, Anna Toonk, the Instagram mystic, was spotted talking stars with model Marianne Garces, while downtown it-girls Marie Stoz and Coco Paul Henriott were seen trading the latest gossip over G&Ts.
Behind the whole affair: the fingerprints of a Kabir Awatramani — rising PR, Pygmalion-about-town, and the man who, we are reliably informed, was last helping Nara Smith launch her cooking oil. Make of that what you will.
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By evening’s end, guests drifted back up to Duane Street buzzing with books under their arms and goody bags in hand, because Marikar apparently decided that if you’re going to throw a party, you throw one with favors. The best of them, at that: Macrene Actives, French Farmacie, Glossier, Crown Affair, Nette, Beauty Pie, and then some.
Incidentally, she knows exactly how to throw a Party.
In partnership with APG
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