Kaushik Dasgupta

Given that Vijayvargiya is from Madhya Pradesh where poha is a veritable staple, he could have been forgiven for confusing it with muri, which Bengalis generally snack on. But this was no momentary lapse of culinary reason..

A searing indictment of the systemic devastation wrought by human activity on the Western Ghats.

This year, according to records of the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College and Hospital, the main centre for treating the disease in the area, the overall encephalitis cases dropped but 22 of the 105 cases at the hospital were of JE at the beginning of the season.

Compiled by the Bihar government, these figures substantiate what experts have been saying for long: that one underlying, common factor in the mortality of AES is the poor economic and health conditions of the people it strikes.

A call to reclaim institutions of higher education as spaces for debate, dissent and dialogue

Brearley's latest book, On Cricket, traverses 50 years of the sport with palpable intellectual curiosity. It’s the work of a person who delighted in the aesthetics of the sport even when he was competing.

A delectable memoir that contextualises Indian food and navigates its culinary nuances effectively

The intractability of waste management in India

Like Inspector Montalbano, the solitary eater will endorse that a table for one is often a deeply satisfying affair. In popular and academic literature, meals are about love, bonhomie, gifting, making friends, cementing social relationships.

Join Troilokyonoth Mukhopadhyay’s beloved fictional character, Domorudhor, on his flights of fancy and adventure

Understanding cultural paradoxes associated with Indian food in this age of globalisation

The panchphoron is the foundation of Bengali cuisine.

The annual flooding of the basins of rivers like the Brahmaputra is difficult to prevent. Not so the increasingly common deluges in India’s biggest cities — manmade disasters only exacerbated by unusual rainfall.

Activities of kings, nobles, farmers, traders and scientists have contributed to the oeuvre of Indian summer fruits. The Grand Trunk Road once was lined with mulberry trees by the Mughal rulers and their feudatories.

The ‘last solace’ of the British in India was ice. But how did it get here in the first place?

A negotiation between nostalgia for the 1980s in JNU and a heartfelt affection for the university.

How the natives and the British collaborated in the making of Calcutta

Communal politics around the biryani has scant respect for its fabled history or diversity. Is it the Persian pilao, improvised and transformed? Is it the result of avant garde experiments in royal kitchens? Or is it a plebeian dish, shaped, like India, by trade and cultural interaction?

The picture gets somewhat muddied when the dominant economic paradigm of our times conflicts with a political tendency.