"Most people seem to think that if they cut 10 trees and then plant 100 trees they have atoned for their sins but ecologically that doesn't make sense. The best thing to do is to p ... Read more
"Most people seem to think that if they cut 10 trees and then plant 100 trees they have atoned for their sins but ecologically that doesn't make sense. The best thing to do is to protect what we already have. There is a pushback from nature and we are all seeing the effects. When you cut old growth trees, it is going to be that much tougher to deal with climate change because these trees store enormous quantities of carbon. Even if you planted 100 other trees, by the time those grow, where will we be? The oldest tree in the world is more than 5000 years old and the oldest tree in India is about 2031 years old. Trees grow continuously until they die. They are a lesson to all of us -- that we need to keep ourselves intellectually and physically fit until we die or we will become obsolete and irrelevant. I want this book to make people relate to trees in a much bigger way than before. Western countries have their champion/heritage/iconic tree registers and there is a lot of public participation in updating them. We too must make our own tree registers at the village, district, state and finally, the national level. We must have a heritage tree register of India that's updated from time to time" – S Natesh, author, 'Iconic Trees of India' talks to Manjula Narayan about the country's many old and wonderful trees with their own fantastic history including the mother tree of the Dussehri mango in UP, the sacred rayan tree of Ranakpur, the coronation cypress of Norbugang in Sikkim, and the Mahabodhi tree in Bodhgaya under which Buddha attained enlightenment, among others. Read more
"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
"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 gourmet in Lucknow touched biryani. They only ate yakhni pulao. So how has biryani become so important? Because if you are a show off and nouveau riche, you could show that, look, I've cooked something so expensive and exotic for my guests! Yes, the Nizams of Hyderabad, with the Hyderabadi dum ki biryani, did cultivate it into a very good art form. But the Nizams rose only after the decline of the Mughals so the biryani came from the Nizam who was experimenting with Turkish and Persian food. The food was from different directions. The biryani has been mythologised and mystified as an exotic dish so it has become aspirational. But a pulao is a pulao is a pulao and, with all due respect to biryani lovers, a biryani is a bit of a con! The biryani rose after 1857 to please the British. People wanted to go outside the pulao route and make it so complicated that it was like a jigsaw puzzle for them to unravel - ki kha kya rahe hai!" - Pushpesh Pant, author, 'Lazzatnama; Recipes of India' talks to Manjula Narayan about biryanis and pulaos, recipes of the Mahabharata, prawn poha, Kayasth mock meat dishes, North Eastern cuisine, kheers and khichdis, and how the modern kitchen has taken the drudgery out of cooking, among many other interesting things. 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
"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 project, we are putting the island, the people and the ecology back in harm's way. These islands experience an earthquake a week. In 2004, precisely the spot where this port is coming up has seen a permanent subsidence of 15 feet. The lighthouse at Indira Point, which was in the forest is now surrounded by the sea. Even if we forget the indigenous people this will effect and the loss of 1 million trees that will be cut down for the project – though there is no reason to forget about them – if there's another tsunami, or another two feet of subsidence, the investment of Rs 72,000 crores will be completely lost." - @pankajsekh, editor, 'The Great Nicobar Betrayal' talks to @utterflea about the recklessness of the planned Great Nicobar Island project which will lead to the loss of primitive forests, undocumented biodiversity, ways of life of the Great Nicobarese and Shompen tribes, and of a huge chunk of public money. 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
"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 and how people navigate around the violence. It is about finding the tender moments in a city that is not 'normal'. The kind of pain that different people have felt in Kashmir has been different but the intensity of it is not something that you want pitched each against the other. Some people say Pandits had it worse because they had to leave. Others say Muslims had it worse because they had to stay and witness what happened over the last 30 years. But it's not a competition of who had it worse. It is horrible what happened to both communities. We have to move forward" - Sadaf Wani, author, 'City As Memory; A Short Biography of Srinagar' talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about life in a city that's seen much conflict, about marginalised sections of the populace, caste and class discrimination, the self surveillance of Kashmiri women, PTSD, the ongoing drug epidemic, the slow decline of the Kashmiri language, and collective and individual trauma. 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
"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 comparable relationship with a fruit. But the excitement of the mango doesn't come from the fruit. It's an ancient thing and the reason the mango is so central to all matters of culture is because settlements across most of India had mango groves close by. They were not planted just for fruit. Fruit was one of the benefits. Primarily, the mango grove was infrastructure. It was where all manner of communal activities happened. That's the reason the mango was central. In India's many calendars, spring was the beginning of the new year and the mango was central to all spring festivals too. That's the reason it is so deeply enmeshed in our psyche. Because we've become deracinated and lost connection with all that, now the only discussion is about the fruit" - Sopan Joshi, author, Mangifera Indica; A Biography of the Mango talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from the loss of mango groves to creating flour from mango kernels, and Jesuit and Mughal experiments in horticulture. 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
"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 so the girl is considered as property and she is the one who has to face the most difficulties. However, in general, perhaps because of the single-child policy, women in China are quite empowered and their participation in the workforce is much higher than that for women in India. Much as we would like to think that these kinds of relationships break cultural barriers, break stereotypes, new types of stereotypes may also be formed. In the end, though, so much of our differences are individual and not attributable to stereotypes" - Shivaji Das and Yolanda Yu, co-authors of 'Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers' talk to Manjula Narayan about love and conflict within Indian-Chinese marriages. 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
"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 our life after we got married, I had to laugh a little bit. I said, "You know, it's a bit odd for a divorced wife to be singing the praises of her ex husband even though we continue to be colleagues and work very closely together because we are both committed to the projects that we started". Rom said there is a lot to write about and we have done a lot together after the divorce so why don't you write about all that. So the idea was to rewrite parts of Snakeman and then add the diaries of the years after that and up to the present. It's a valuable account of the conservation projects we've been involved with in the last 20 years. It was difficult on many levels. When you've lived with someone and been their wife for 20 years and then you are something else, there's a constant renegotiation of the tone. I was very happy when a friend said you've got the tone right. I still admire Rom - he's done so much for conservation in this country. I felt the follow up should also be written from my perspective. It's probably the most difficult writing I've ever done" - Zai Whitaker, author, Scaling Up talks to Manjula Narayan about her life at Chennai's Crocodile Bank, a crocodile called Jaws III, the Irular tribe, why snakes are important, and the many projects she is juggling at the moment. 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 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 when the marriage of these two happened, that's lost in history somewhere. In the West, people's palates are getting more accustomed to spices so there are more chai spice brands coming about and a lot of the blends are getting richer in spice. About the recipes, I really wanted to come up with ones that were simple to make, simple to bake. The idea was to put spices in everything. When you spice up cakes, they taste amazing to then why not put in the whole concoction of the tea? Masala chai cake makes so much sense," says Mira Manek, author, The Book of Chai that includes a history of chai drinking in India, stories of her own family's migrations from Gujarat to East Africa and the UK, and a range of recipes of regular Indian teatime favourites like chilli cheese toast and bhajias as well as fusion treats like Parle G cheesecake, chai fudge, and of course, Masala chai cake. 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 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 consequences of your actions. Therefore, if your actions have been evil, then it is better to own up and do something to correct it and make amends. You find this idea of the karmic in the Manusmriti too. Yes, there's also a lot in the Manusmriti about jatis and marriage and caste, which is not appealing to a modern mind. But at least 40 smritis have been known to exist. The Manusmriti was just the one chosen by the British when they were looking at Hindu law. The smritis were a way of updating legislature, as it were, with changing times. It wasn't set in stone and there's an awareness within the tradition about this. In the end, we have to apply our judgement to both tradition and modernity." Arvind Sharma, author, From Fire to Light; Rereading the Manusmrti talks to Manjula Narayan about the amorphousness of religion in India, Ambedkar and Buddhism, the text's pronouncements about women and oppressed castes, and the context in which the Manusmriti was written. 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
"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 that particular time. The main reality of Nehru's time wasn't the threat from Pakistan or China or India's relations with the Soviet Union or the US. The biggest physical reality was hunger. Food is a strategic commodity as we see even now in Gaza and Ukraine. The Indian people did not create the Indian food crisis. It was a creation of the Allied war effort. Food had to be acquired. Nehru tried very hard to deal with the food security issue and reached out to many countries. India's first diplomats were actually food diplomats. This was the reality of that time" - Kallol Bhattacherjee, author, 'Nehru's First Recruits; The Diplomats Who Built Independent India's Foreign Policy' talks to Manjula Narayan about his compelling study of the Indian Foreign Service, the many individuals from varied backgrounds who formed part of it in the immediate post Independence period, the first evacuation of Indians during an international crisis, the evolution of the idea of Panchsheel, the 1962 war with China and the birth of Indian realism, the role of stenographers in the IFS, the battle of Surabaya that could have had an impact on Indian independence, and the many dynamics that were crashing against each other in the early days of the Indian republic. Read more
