From political novels to bildungsromans to new talent, here's the fiction that stood out in 2023

Tide-pooling is similar to birding but for both, it takes a short while to get your eye in before you actually start spotting things

Accolades and beauty come and go, but what makes us happy is staying true to ourselves

From theatre festivals to retrospectives of India's finest modern artists, from sleep tourism being the new way to travel and Sriracha sauce entering our kitchens, 2024 holds a promise of new discoveries and experiences

From childhood trips savouring simple fare along the way to a recent visit to Nagaland, travelling has given me a peek into the culinary traditions of India

Sanjay Das is a Delhi-based photographer who documented the Bengal way of life through its temples, bazaars and rituals

Activists ask animals if they want personhood status, but do the latter really want to get human status?

Rather than seeing each other’s pain, we are turning against each other and are more lonely than ever before

The journey of curry — the word, the concept and indeed the food — shows the inadequacy of the word 'authenticity.' That does not mean it is without its uses. When one talks about 'authentic food' from a marginalised culture, one is also talking about who gets to make it, talk about it and benefit from it

The academic on writing about the dichotomies of the Mauryan ruler and his enduring appeal

We all need some basic training as to how to deal with the animals we are likely to encounter in our daily lives and it will be more useful than a lot of the other rubbish we make our kids cram up

Jhumpa Lahiri on being an outsider everywhere, telling the other side of the Roman story in her new book Roman Stories and the importance of defending free speech

All you need to do is stay put in one place all day and watch the birds come and go in the normal course of the day

Christmas is when we must rise above our divides and come together to plant seeds of change

Iyengar tells the story of the Dalit community of Doms but is careful never to allow the authorial “I” to overpower the narrative, reflecting instead on the privilege that it occupies

The narrative shuttles between past and present, countries and continents, weaving a tale of love, loneliness, longing, and death, perforated by moments of wit, humour, and joy. Each story is interconnected like water “that connects them all in time and space and always has”

English writer and translator Adam Biles on his new novel, how post-Brexit UK led him to write a sequel of sorts to George Orwell's Animal Farm and why France trumps the UK in reading culture

The rivalry of two boys in a chawl erupts against the backdrop of the Babri Masjid demolition

From soldier crabs, sand-bubblers and the grey reef heron to eels and starfish, there's plenty of wildlife in and around beaches to observe and admire

As her classic book on Indian cuisine completes four decades, actor and author Madhur Jaffrey talks about being an accidental cook, introducing the West to Indian recipes, and the show that made her a star

A retrospective show at Bikaner House, New Delhi, celebrates fifty years of Radhakrishnan's artistic career, who learnt from Ramkinkar Baij and Somnath Hore

A look at the lives of sand bubbler crabs and soldier crabs, which are responsible for the beautiful spiral rangoli-like patterns on beaches

In rural Bihar, the wedding season is a buzz with trolley dancers. What makes them the show stoppers and the business of making these trolleys more than just a song and dance

The book explores how in some eastern states, the Sikhs had to battle the tag of 'outsiders' when they first landed in settlements, with immigrants suffering 'ethnic discrimination and social segregation'