It was a weekday night and we were having the usual family argument about whether to watch Masterchef Australia or Kaun Banega Crorepati. “This is the episode where someone wins seven crores!” my mother said. Against that, my argument of “But we’ll find out today whether the Red team’s croquembouche was too biscuit-ty or not!” ...

In 2012, a precocious ten year-old girl filed an RTI query with the Prime Minister’s office. She wanted to know when the government had declared hockey as India’s national sport. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports responded and said that there was no official declaration that hockey was our national sport. In fact, they ...

In the annals of history, they will mark the noughties as the beginning of the end of the traditional South Indian brahmin wedding. Mehndi and sangeet ceremonies are now common additions. At engagement ceremonies, the bride and groom cut three-tier cakes and exchange rings. Diaphanous zardozi sarees, once dismissed as North-Indian gaudiness, make regular appearances ...

I got to a meeting exactly on time the other day, braving stormy weather, heavy traffic and a rather large cow that seemed to think it had been called to a higher purpose in the middle of the street. I walked into the meeting room feeling a bit flustered, but then I saw that the lady ...

Earlier this year, the Maharashtra government decided to allow homeopaths to prescribe so-called allopathic medicines. This caused alarm in medical circles, and now the decision itself has run into some trouble. But most people said it was all unnecessary fuss. After all, ours is a country where you can get your ears candled and your ...

My friends and family keep sharing cooking articles with me. They send tips on how to get the seeds neatly out of a pomegranate, and articles labelled “15 Foods you can make while pressing Like on Election-Selfies”, or “How to cut tomatoes like Rajnikanth–You have been doing it wrong all your life”. This is all ...

Great train journeys are a fixture on the landscape of Indian nostalgia. Whenever you are stuck for conversation, all you have to do is whisper something like, “Don’t you love travelling by train?”, and all manner of stories will come tumbling forth. But I realise now that these are romanticised memories of our childhood, and ...

A terrifying new disease is spreading its slimy tentacles all across the country, only months after the first outbreak. The disease, caused by a deadly virus, targets people such as politicians, public officials, and even gurus, whose moral immunity may have already been weakened by years of exposure to similar illnesses.  The disease mainly affects ...

Last Sunday, I went for an early morning walk in Lalbagh, one of the two large gardens of Bangalore. Now Lalbagh on most mornings is a little microcosm of Bangalore. Old people in freshly-starched clothes walk next to unwashed teenagers in their pyjamas.  Couples laze on benches, middle-aged men do yoga, children cry for lost ...