156 items in this section. Displaying page 12 of 16
The dabbawalas of Mumbai
Late every morning at Mumbai, in India, rows and rows of neatly stacked dabbas (boxes) with weird markings on the top are trundled across busy office buildings. At fifteen to one, a cloth capped man delivers one of these cylindrical boxes on my table in the Fort area. At once I open the case and find the lunch my mother had packed. Hot lunch delivered at the doorstep. Is this the same food my mother packed for me?...
Chintu Pintu Talk on the Net Again
Do you send E-mails to your friends? E-mails in which you write in words how you are feeling — happy or sad? Do you want to surprise your friends by sending them an e-mail in a new language? The language of the Internet? If so, then read on to know what Chintu and Pintu write. Then, impress your friends! Chintu: Hi Pintu! Chintu Pintu Talk on the Net Again [] Pintu: Hullo Chintu!...
They Make you Swallow a Fish for a Herbal Cure
As the northwest monsoon strikes India in the first week of June, people from all parts of India, and abroad, make a beeline for Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. They all have one thing in common: they suffer from the disease of asthma and gather in Hyderabad for a unique herbal cure. The medicine is stuffed inside the mouth of a three-inch live murrel fish which the patient is made to swallow. Once inside the body, the fish releases the medicine....
Making Music
This happened a long time ago. Hemavati sat in her kitchen after a meal. There was nothing much to do, and Hemavati was bored. So she picked up the thaali or plate in which she had eaten earlier and struck it with a ladle. Taaaaang, traaaaaang, traaaaang… it went. Funny sound, she thought. But then, she liked it too. It was better than many other sounds. For instance, it was better than the snoring sounds her husband made when he slept....
Signals of the Past
You want to send a message to someone. Immediately. No problem. You just pick up a land phone or a mobile phone, or send an email. The telegram is still there but many of us have forgotten about it. Now travel back in time to France, 206 years ago, when there was none of your latest technology. Not even the telegraph. But people still felt the need to send long distance messages. Signals of the Past [] It was then that a Frenchman called Chappe invented a code for the alphabet....
Puppets on a String Dance Again
Vishnudas Bhave’s puppets had to go through a long ordeal before they finally got to the right place and in the hands of the right people. It was not just a long journey but a tough one too. This story dates back to the year 1843, when the father of Marathi theatre, Vishnudas Bhave created his puppets, in Maharashtra’s Sangli district. They were not ordinary wooden puppets. They were so life-like that it seemed they would talk to you any moment....
The Master of 'Mithaai'
It was the summer of 1997. I was travelling through the villages of West Bengal in search of the famed folk musicians of Bengal. They were simple people who journeyed from village to village, singing and performing. But something happened along the way… The afternoon sun was at its height when I reached Kankalitala, in the northwestern part of West Bengal. The temple in Kankalitala is very popular among the worshippers of Goddess Kali. The temple is located right next to a river called Kopai, a beautiful...
How the Gorkhas Came to Dehradun
Some time ago, Madhu Gurung wrote about her grandmother who was the best storyteller in the world. Once ‘Bajai’ as she was called, told a different kind of a story – a real story of how the Gorkha warriors of Nepal came to settle down in Dehradun. Among them was Bajai’s grandfather, the chieftain of a clan. Bajai told us that more than 200 years ago, when the British East India Company ruled parts of India, they attacked Nepal....
The Girl who Won the Boys Chess Title
Koneru Humpy will win many chess titles in her career. After each title she will also get many phone calls congratulating her. But there is one phone call she will never forget. It is the call she got from Viswanathan Anand, after she won the World Chess Championship title in the under-12 category, last year. The championship was held in Spain. In the year 2000, the smiling young curly-haired girl from Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, created another record....
Rats! Rats! Rats!
Rats here, rats there, rats everywhere! In the kitchen, in the storage cupboards, in shops, in restaurants, all over the place. People in Paris have no respite. The rat population has suddenly grown in such large numbers that Paris may soon need a Pied Piper to weed them out of the city. Rats! Rats! Rats! [] The rat boom happened because of a new underground railway system. When work began on the railway system, workmen began digging the ground to make tunnels for the trains....