Books and Authors

"Stone carving is really one of the great accomplishments of India's architecture. The jali is part of that larger rock cutting and carving tradition. It has a special place because it wasn't just a decorative feature. It filtered light onto the most sacred spots around the graves and shrines of saints and created a kind of metaphorical language which involved the interaction of light and shadow i...

"Incense was the original perfume. There was the belief that if you burnt it, the smoke was able to transcend the barrier between the worlds. Things like sandalwood may have remained in the realm of worship but once the kings and the nobles began smearing it on their bodies, it became popular with everybody. Technically, you can have your incense smell of anything just like you can have your perfu...

"There's an upsurge of interest in natural history at every level and that's a positive sign. The diversity of work by these biologists is a reflection of that interest. There are people working at various levels to bring about change and conserve species. I wanted to write about women who had substantially impacted landscapes and ecosystems, who had changed the direction of conservation outcomes....

We need to recognise that the rural has always been a fluid place and it continues to be a fluid place. At the same time, in the case of India, it is not dying, it is not even shrinking. The absolute size of the rural is also expanding. We think in linear terms. We think that there is a process of urbanisation and that there's an inevitability of urbanisation. What happened during the pandemic wil...

"The structure of religious division may keep changing; the structure of political oppression may keep changing; the details may keep changing, but the Reality that Kabir evokes beyond this is timeless. So, his words are also timeless. Social activists use Kabir for their own agenda. They say Kabir is about Hindu-Muslim unity. That's not really true. He is lambasting both Hindus and Muslims. All h...

"Today, the internet makes it possible for us to get into multiple businesses; there's a convergence of technologies which opens up new opportunities. We are at a real cusp. In all my 40 years of working, I have never seen a technology with such a wide sweeping impact as Generative AI. But you can't stop technology, you have to keep moving with it." - Ashok Soota, co-author, 'Busted; Debunking Man...

"Many of the challenges that Anandibai faced are universal - whether it's childbirth or trying to please everybody - but she had a strong sense of self so she was constantly trying to juggle, and that's something that women today face too. In many ways, I feel like I was able to examine my own voice, my own experiences through writing about her. It was very liberating to be able to take someone el...

"Today, the reason I've been completely marginalised is that the leadership of my party regards me as a loose cannon. My commitment to secular fundamentalism is of such a basic character that pragmatic people in the Congress party think I'm being too extreme" - Mani Shankar Aiyar, politician and author, 'Memoirs of a Maverick' talks to Manjula Narayan about the difference between Hinduism and Hind...

"Prime ministership is a continuum. If VP Singh had not done Mandal to empower the OBCs, the story for Mr Modi might have been very different. He is today an OBC PM and he's talking about taking power to the most backward, the Mahadalits, the Pasmanda Muslims; those who have been on the peripheries of power are to be given a stake. If VP Singh hadn't done as he did, maybe the BJP would have contin...

"The issues of citizenship and identity become very mixed up in the case of cross border communities like Bengalis and Nepalis. And that is something one is seeing now happening with Kukis as well in Manipur, where there is widespread suspicion that a lot of them have come from Myanmar" - Samrat Choudhury, author, 'Northeast India; A Political History' talks to Manjula Narayan about the complex cu...

"Our writers have never divorced themselves from social reality. They have not really gone as much into individual lives without taking into account the social space in which those lives are lived. Almost all these stories are written in a down-to-earth mode. The attempt is largely to depict the real world and not the world of the intellectual imagination or fantasy. There's too much reality to ge...

"Even women who says they are feminist, within the family, they put out messages that they have internalised. Both daughters and sons notice it and the sons profit from it. But in fact, the mother's spoiling of her son is a negative gift because the world outside is not a cuddly place. As a result, it becomes difficult for him to handle that world. If we want to look at the future, we first have t...

"Our food memories are hardwired in our brain. I tell parents about the importance of giving your child healthy comfort food so that they return to those foods as adults in times of happiness and stress. If junk food is their comfort food as children, they will return to it as adults, and we know that those foods actually cause depression. Food has a lot of effect on your hormones. When you eat a...

"There are no ghosts, but ghostliness does exist" - Riksunder Banerjee, author, 'Haunted Places of India' talks to Hindustan Times' Manjula Narayan about the paranormal, horror stories from different parts of the country, and avenging ghost mothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The things she'd seen of the world made her cautious of men in general. So, she never allowed herself to be dictated to by a man. Also, she understood, from the other tawaifs, that it was important to give your child an education, which she hadn't had herself. I was sent to boarding school. I never really faced any discrimination because, the minute I opened my mouth, somehow, people think I come...

"Seaweed is packed with iron, zinc, Omega 3, protein and Vitamin B12 and is especially important for countries with a large vegetarian population like India, where it can provide a lot of the nutritional intake. India also has a huge potential for seaweed farming. It has a 17000-kilometre coastline and 700 types of seaweed but you don't yet know how to cultivate it so there's a lot of research to...

"We thought that, when it came to mammals, we knew it all. But we've just discovered two new macaques and a new barking deer in Arunachal Pradesh. We now know that we have more than 440 mammals in India. And there must be more. We need many more Indians working on many more discrete taxa. If they do that then we'll have a truer picture. We work with an encyclopaedia of ignorance to guide us. Natur...

"If the police accuses someone, unless it's proved in court, don't believe them," says Shevlin Sebastian, co-author, The Stolen Necklace, which examines the case of VK Thajudheen, whose safe middle class existence was shattered when he was imprisoned for a petty crime he did not commit. A true story of police excess in a small town in north Kerala, it takes readers into the milieu of the Muslim co...

"Every courtesan from Amrapali to Hazrat Mahal has had an impact on the sociopolitical environment," says Madhur Gupta whose 'Courting Hindustan' presents a rich portrait of the legendary performers who enriched Indian culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Other people do adventure sports and break their legs; I go and eat and break my tummy" - Zac O'Yeah, author, 'Digesting India' talks to Hindustan Times' Manjula Narayan about eating fresh mussels in Thalassery, exploring Ahmedabad's flea market, munching on Russian salad in Prayagraj, and more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The cheetah is the only mammal to have become extinct after independence. Today we are an aspirational country. Why can't we restore a species that we lost? I'm asking this from a purely nationalist point of view" - Divyabhanusinh, author, The Story of India's Cheetahs talks to Manjula Narayan about the long history of the cat in India and the many expected benefits to the ecosystem of its reintr...

"This map of Shahjahanabad, what's now Old Delhi, was made in 1847. After the revolt of 1857 was suppressed by the British, large parts of the city were demolished. So much changed that this map is an invaluable look at that city as it was before the destruction of 1857" - Swapna Liddle, author, 'Shahjahanabad; Mapping a Mughal City' talks to Manjula Narayan about the exquisite administrative map...

"Birdwatching is a hobby whose time has come in India today. That's why we're seeing such an explosion of interest" - Aasheesh Pittie, author, The Living Air talks to @utterflea about imitative drongos, the impact of the loss of vultures, and why we love birds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Panchatantra is an allegory of humanness. Its animals are not zoomorphic; they are actually humans wearing the mask of animals. The Panchatantra is not at all concerned with morality. It doesn't say that something is right or wrong. None of the stories are judgemental. They don't tell you how to behave; they show you what behaviour is like. It's a mirror held up to humanness. That's one of th...

"Women have been the maintainers of India's food culture forever. Then, they were empowered by technology and took to blogging about food, and it's grown from there. Most of the really good deep-dive food writing in India now is largely being done by women" - Charmaine O'Brien, author, Eating the Present Tasting the Future talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from India's post-Liberalisation...