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Madurai is not just Meenakshi, of course

The obit of a Tamil writer Arshia, superbly written by Kavita Muralidharan reminds us. In mainstream Tamil cinema and literature, Madurai has almost always been defined by clichés. It is either the exotic temple city characterised by colourful festivals for each ancient street or the rustic...

Indecent Exposure (to radioactive elements she’d discovered)

We are talking about a review of a biography on Marie Curie... "She strove throughout, and especially at the end, to keep a firm distinction between her personal and scientific life. But in this she failed, and a woman of greater understanding of the world...

Purple Windows, Blue Blood

Boston's Beacon Hill, one of its oldest neighborhoods, was once home to Boston Brahmins. Take a walk there and you'll notice that some homes have purple tinted windows. And the panes are sometimes mismatched? What's the deal? Between 1818 and 1824, an English company sent...

Guru Nanak College, The English Patient, Rajaji…

A series of unconnected things you'd think but here is a nice Madras story by S. Muthiah connecting them all. Lt. Gen. Inderjit Singh Gill passed away on May 30. This piece, which first appeared in the Indian Review of Books (1997), will , S....

Holmes & Gandhi

Could these gentlemen have met in London? The answer is yes -- and I find the reasoning brilliant! G. Ram Mohan deduces in Madras Musings... Let me clarify matters – Kittu and his fellow members of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Madras, in common with...

The Spice Scout

Claire Cheney has traveled to close to a dozen countries to bring quality spices and herbs back to Curio Spice Co. A former barista, she saw that people believed in fair trade and were willing pay for good quality, single-origin coffee. She wants to see...