Tag Archives: food

Bad ideas, Good Ideas, Images

From Cucumber Juice to Mutton Soup, A Culinary Healing Journey: Anitha S

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This is a Guest Post by ANITHA S

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As a nature lover and then an ecologist, my tryst with the living world has been fascinating, exciting, scary and at time dangerous. The most recent of this interaction was with a jackfruit tree in my backyard that has the uncanny capacity to produce fruits all the year round…juicy, sweet and delicious fruits that one cannot even imagine throwing away. I developed a balance of sharing the  fruits with the bats, squirrels, crows, tree pies, woodpeckers and koels that would inhabit my garden whenever the fruit ripens and spreads its fragrance around. Continue reading From Cucumber Juice to Mutton Soup, A Culinary Healing Journey: Anitha S →

Everyday Life, Frontiers, Genders, Identities, Language

Our search for Charasi Kababs: Saba Dewan

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Guest post by SABA DEWAN

Qissa Khwani bazaar, Peshawar

I was last in Pakistan in 2006 during Ramzan. Rahul had some work in Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore and I had used that as an excuse to visit my mother’s place of birth. While I had visited my mother’s beloved Lahore a few times earlier this was to be my first trip to Islamabad and Peshawar.

To cut a long story short, on our first evening in Peshawar, post iftaar, we found ourselves in the fabled Qissa Khwani bazaar, the Bazaar of Story tellers. It was here that in 1930 British troops had fired upon an anti-colonial demonstration of non violent, unarmed nationalist Khudai Khidmatgars leaving more than 400 amongst them dead. History has come a long way since then marking contemporary Peshawar as one of the more violence prone cities of Pakistan. Continue reading Our search for Charasi Kababs: Saba Dewan →

Everyday Life, Frontiers, Good Ideas, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Violence-Conflict

India and Pakistan: A Matter of Taste

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Imported from Karachi, Shan masalas are a hit in Delhi. They make sure anyone can make good Biryani or Korma. Photo taken at a grocery store in south Delhi by Shivam Vij
Dabur Chawanprash at a grocery store in Lahore. The Devnagiri script on the pack would be a rarity in Pakistan! Photo credit: Shiraz Hassan
Everyday Life, Metropolis

Let Them Eat Gobi

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It seems the Planning Commission exists on a planet which is so far removed from anything we might call the real world, that one begins to wonder whether its staff have not been born, bred and spent the entirety of their lives within the corridors of Yojana Bhavan, with tubes up their noses for nutrition. How else does one make sense of new figures released by the Tendulkar Committee according to which an income of 560 rupees per month in urban India and 368 rupees per month in rural India is enough to fulfill a person’s daily nutritional needs (2,100 calories urban; 2,400 calories rural). This can only mean one of two things: either the Planning Commission has invented a time machine whereby everyone can access food at 1980 prices, or they have simply gone insane. Continue reading Let Them Eat Gobi →