Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria

In 1856, the last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah invites a prince from Delhi to his durbaar. He serves a dish, which masquerades as a a murabba - a thick, highly spiced conserve made of fruit or vegetables. In return, the prince invites Wajid Ali Shah to Delhi, and he too serves hundreds of dishes which are not what they appear. This week, in the seventh episode of the series, Fabulous Foods, we e...

"Peter Piper picked some packs of pickled peppers in each pack of pickled peppers that peter piper picked was 3 pickled peppers. Now peter piper is happy with all 36 of his pickled peppers. How many packs of pickled peppers did peter piper pick?" What does this tongue twisting nursery rhyme have to do with a global smuggling operation between two colonial powers of the 18th century? And what does...

What does a 12th century treatise on the life of a medieval king in Karnataka have in common with 1st century Sangam literature from Tamil Nadu, that describes the ancient food practices of the Tamil people? And do they have to do with Dashavatars of Vishnu? This week, in the fifth episode of the series Fabulous Foods, we travel from Udupi in Karnataka to Madurai in Tamil Nadu, and dive into the f...

What connects the assasination attempt of King Jospeh 1 in Portugal, the ban on the Konkani language in Goa and a story about a young Lord Krishna, whose bravery provided the name of a famous waterfall? And how does it have an impact on almost all our culinary practices as Indians? This week, in the fourth episode of Fabulous Foods, we discover an unlikely music and storytelling tradition which is...

Why is the spice Nutmeg being mentioned in India's foremost treatise on military strategy? Why is it mentioned in a tri-fold collection of Sanskrit poetry about politics, erotic passion and renunciation? And what does it all have to do with the tiny cluster of islands in the southeastern Indian ocean, part of modern day Indonesia? This week, in the third episode of Fabulous Foods, we trace the jou...

About 2000 years ago, a group of people escaping persecution by the Greeks landed on the shores of Alibaug in Maharashtra, India. They were a small community, and soon spread out across the state. A similar phenomenon was observed in Cochin and Calcutta as well. The community went onto integrate so well into the regions they lived in, that they became indistinguishable from the natives. This week,...

In the spring of 1943, US torpedo boat No. 109 gets shattered to pieces by a Japanese destroyer. Some of the crew members make a miraculous escape, and one of them goes on to create history. Over 8000 miles across the oceans in Gujarat India, a team of paleobotanists find 37 million year old fossil. This fossil is of an object which is often mailed across the world by tourists who visit Hawaii. Bu...

In the early 2000's, a concerned government official approached Dave Martins. Dave was an iconic musician from the Caribbean, who was the lead vocalist of the band Tradewinds. Someone who had his finger on the pulse of the Southern Caribbean islands. The government official asked him to write a song to quell the ethnic violence in Guyana. In another time, at the turn of the 20th century, Tamilians...

"In October 2021, the Kannada film Salaga, featured a track which was sung by a Hindustani classical singer, the first from her community. Further up north in Hyderabad, since the 18th century, there is a popular form of music which features only drums. Across the border in Pakistan, a song sung by Balochi singer Shabana Noshi became the anthem of the Pakistan People's Party, following which Benaz...

"In the 14th season of Coke Studio Pakistan, Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal gave us a beautiful song steeped in the Sufi tradition - Tu Jhoom. Almost 75 years ago, the prolific writer Saddat Hassan Manto, gave us 'Yazid', a story set in the backdrop of partition. But there is an unlikely connection between the two. This week in the sixth episode of the series The Great Migration, we uncover the sto...

In 1921, a bloody rebellion in North Kerala led to the death of over 2000 people. In 2018, almost a century later, a song from the film Oru Adaar Love titled Manikya Malaraya Poovi went viral, garnering millions of views, even from parts of India that did not understand a word of Malayalam. But what could connect these two wildly diferent events? This week, in the fifth episode of the series The G...

What does a military dictator in a South-East African republic have in common with Ramanand Sagar, the man who made the cult television show Ramayan? And what could it have to do with one of the richest communities in India, which actually thrived in that very African republic? This week, in the fourth episode of the series The Great Migration, we travel from across Asia and Africa to uncover this...

What does a small cluster of less than 100 villages in Tamil Nadu have in common with agrarian flatlands of Burma? And what are both of these doing in a conversation taking place in a modern urban home in the IT corridor of Bangalore? This week, in the the third episode of teh series, The Great Migration, we look at the story of the Chettiar community, who at the dawn of the 20th century owned a f...

In 1898, the New York Times wrote a glowing review of this particular service in India. Closer home, the Bombay Mill Owners Association wasn't so pleased - The service was so popular amongst its workers, that it led to work disruptions. But what has all this got to do with the hill city of Dehradun. This week, in the second episode of the series, The Great Migration, we delve into this now forgott...

"It's all around us, so much so, that probably no state in India has been untouched by it - The labour migration. The state which probably provides the most manpower to India's varied workforce is Bihar. More specifically, the Bhojpur region. While the region has become infamous for its supposedly low brow music and cinema, what hides underneath is a whole genre of art which is seldom heard by out...

In 1947, on the eve of Partition, a young man left Lahore and came to Shimla. What makes his journey unique, amongst the millions who must have undertaken this voyage is what he ended up doing in Shimla. What started out as a stationery shop went on to become a storied institution. This week, we travel to Shimla and learn about a rare bookshop which through a hand of chance, came in possession of...

It's been over 2 years we have travelled together. This month, the Caravan rests to return in 2022. Till then Check out the other episodes of "India's Linguistic Heritage" The Hidden Story of Sanskrit, and the North-South Divide : https://ivm.today/3CpKQuO Reclaiming India's Linguistic Heritage: 300 Ramayanas?: https://ivm.today/3kgataz Partitions Unknown: Hindi, Urdu and the Umbilical Cord: https...

Why does the hill district of Shimla, home to a mere 8 lakh people, have at least 10-15 different languages? Why does Indonesia have 250 languages, and the strangest of them all - Papua New Guinea, an island nation, to this very day, has over one thousand spoken languages? Why did these rather disparate places acquire such a high density of languages, despite having relatively smaller populations....

In the early 19th century, the Maharaja of Travancore levied an absolutely bizzare tax: Any woman who had come of age and had breasts had to pay a breast tax, and bare her breasts to anyone who was of a higher caste to them. This was one amongst the hundreds of taxes the lower castes had to endure, which put them in a cycle of perpetual debt and poverty. And then came a revolt which led the Mahara...

In 2018, a research study by the University of Michigan and World Bank found that women who are native speakers of certain kind of languages have a lower labour force participation rate and lower educational attainment. How did our Indian languages fare? This week, in the fifth episode of the series, India's Linguistic Heritage, we uncover the hidden injustice perpetrated by our languages on women...

"In 12th century Delhi, a new language began to emerge, which was initially known as Dehlavi. Parallelly, the political landscape of India changed, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and the arrival of the Mughals. With them came Persian, and quickly established itself as the language of power. Over time, a new language emerged, a combination of Dehlavi and Persian. But the arrival of t...

"In 2008, a quasi political organisation asked for the removal of an academic paper from the syllabus of Delhi University. They eventually succeeded in 2011. But what was in that paper that had 'hurt' sentiments? This week, in the second episode of India's linguistic heritage, and on the occasion of Diwali, we dive into a simple question: How many Ramayans? Three hundred or Three thousand? Which i...

In the summer of 1420, following a strange series of events, the migration of a community of people started from a border town between Tamil Nadu and Kerala, to a village in Karnataka. The village eventually came to have a unique claim to fame: It became known as India's Sanskrit village, where every resident spoke Sanskrit. And yet, lesser known is the story of another language that is spoken the...

A customs inspection at the Switzerland Italy Border, murders in the Tibetan highlands and a weaving workshop in Srinagar - Kashmir. What connects these disparate places? This week, in the tenth episode of Kashmir Diaries, Utsav brings to you the wild story of Shahtoosh, the most expensive fabric in the world, and completely illegal. Straddling three countries, this story has an innocent animal at...

"In 1948, as India was fighting Pakistan in Kashmir, the Pakistani army reached this village but bypassed it completely. Simply because hidden behind a gorge, with just one access point, the village was invisible to them. Legend has it that when the army of a neighbouring kingdom tried to invade the village, they were greeted with huge boulders falling off the gorge, which forced the army to retre...