"There is no reference to the biryani in the popular domain earlier than 125 years ago. Biryani was just one of the many varieties of pulao. One text tells us that no civilised gou ... Read more
"The Great Nicobar Island Project will cause huge devastation in the landscape. Just 20 years ago, this was the epicentre of the earthquake and tsunami of December 2004. With this ... Read more
"For people who grew up in the 1990s in Srinagar, the undercurrent of tension has always been our lived reality. This book is about how everyday normal lives also exist in Kashmir ... Read more
"The mango truly is a natural obsession, like cricket or Bollywood or politics. Every Indian is an expert on the mango. Perhaps there's no other country in the world which has a co ... Read more
"In the Indian-Chinese context, food is one of the battlegrounds. It's often the first thing that triggers parents of the couple. Both Indian and Chinese societies are patriarchal ... Read more
"Last year, when Anita Mani of Indian Pitta Books contacted me and asked if we could update Snakeman (1989), which was about Rom Whitaker and his exploits with reptiles and about o ... Read more
"The history of drinking spices is older than the history of drinking tea, which is more recent in India. Drinking spices in hot water and in milk comes from the Ayurveda. As to w ... Read more
"The general greater acceptance of reservations in India as compared to the US comes from the acceptance of a karmic world view, the principle that you can't escape the consequence ... Read more
"The problem of studying history is that we often think of history from today's point of view. When we look at history we must always look at the physical reality that existed at t ... Read more
"It's very easy to criticise the BJP government or the Mamta government for censorship. What we don't realise is we are doing the same thing on social media without allowing a cert ... Read more
