Books and Authors

"While I was translating this manuscript from Persian I realised that the food mentioned is very different from what's sold now as Mughal food. They had four masalas only. We have now laced the mutton, chicken and fish with spices so that the real taste has disappeared. In those days, you could taste the meat. The food eaten by Jahangir and Nur Jahan was very different and I wanted people to know that what we are eating in the name of Mughal food is not really Mughal food" - Salma Yusuf Husain, translator, 'Alwan-e-Nemat; A Journey Through Jahangir's Kitchen' talks to Manjula Narayan about featured recipes that combine unlikely ingredients like the fish and banana curry, Mughal emperor Jahangir's love for Gujarati khichdi and rohu, his queen Nur Jahan's many culinary innovations including the creation of fruit yogurts and vibrantly coloured dishes, how Indian cooks in the imperial kitchen took Iranian and Central Asian recipes and completely transformed them, how they turned pulao into biryani by layering and roasting it, her own surprise on encountering the utterly rice-less biryani Isfahani during a visit to Iran, and why the vegetable biryani cannot be called a biryani at all.

"Those who don't have a university or a high school for their languages are the ones who don't have economic resources. The poorest among the poor are linguistically deprived and also economically deprived. People say, 'What is the harm if many languages go and only some remain?' These are questions raised out of ignorance. Every language is a unique world view. The way every language defines space and time is unique. When languages die, we are denying ourselves the benefit of the diversity of unique world views. Diversity is necessary for the evolutionary process. By denying diversity, we are reducing our ability to go forward and meet new challenges" - GN Devy, author, 'India; A Linguistic Civilization' talks to Manjula Narayan about the emergence of a rich literature in many Adivasi languages in the 21st century, his work with the Linguistic Survey of India, language aphasia, the rise of Sanskrit, why the Harappan script still hasn't been deciphered, the tragedy of gadgets replacing parental interactions with children, and dyslexia and dysgraphia as conditions that indicate a step in the evolutionary process, among other things.

"In the 1970s, Muslim characters in films were very different. In the 1990s, Roja opened the floodgates for films representing Muslims as terrorists. It was the first film which looked at the identity of the enemy. Then, especially after the attacks of 9/11, there was a big change in the representation of Muslims in Hindi films. As for women, in many films, Muslim women are reduced to being victims of oppression always. Now, whatever is happening in the current sociopolitical scene is directly reflected on screen. I have tried to connect the politics of representation in Hindi films with contemporary politics. So my book isn't just film studies, it is also a political text" — Nadira Khatun, author, 'Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Pran in Zanjeer to the saviour syndrome in Gully Boy, the Brahmanical stance of films like Secret Superstar and Lipstick Under my Burqa, the absence of films made by subaltern Muslims, the vanished Muslim Social of the 1970s and 80s, and much more.

"The parapsychological element is very strong in Theyyam, which is an example of Indian shamanism. When you worship a Theyyam, you don't need an intermediary, a priest, like you do in a temple; here you can go into a direct dialogue with the Theyyam. 90 percent of the Theyyams are mother goddesses performed by men. And though a Theyyam performance is highly caste oriented, it can only be a success if every community of a particular area gives their support. So everybody joins together for it and if they have disputes, it is all settled before the Theyyam, during the performance" - KK Gopalakrishnan, author, 'Theyyam; Indian Folk Ritual Theatre' talks to Manjula Narayan about this living tradition of Kerala, the touching stories that are narrated, elements of ancestor and nature worship that are central to the pre-Brahmanical folk form, the paradox of it flourishing in northern Kerala where communism first sprouted in the state, the Muslim Theyyams of Malabar, the spectacle of the performances, and how it is, in a sense, a repository of the race memory of the people of the region.

"She was my grandmother so I could have wanted to create a portrait of a person who was very fantastic and - she was fantastic and wonderful - but I didn't want to do anything that wasn't factual that tried to whitewash anything she did - there ware controversial things about her and her academic life and how she went about things. I knew this from my own mother 's view of her. One of the reasons Thiago and I did get along was because we were very clear that we weren't going to do a hagiography" -- Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, co-authors of 'Iru; the Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve' talk to Manjula Narayan about the pioneering Indian anthropologist, her time in 1920s Berlin where she did her PhD under racist anthropologist Eugin Fischer, her use of the Mahabharata and other ancient Indian texts to help her interpret contemporary questions about language, culture and religion in Indian society, Yugant, their own use of critical fabulation in the writing of this book, and the strange similarity between the sarcasm and dourness of the people of Berlin and of Karve's hometown, Pune!

"In the West and in privileged pockets of India that have access to technology, we think technology is linear — first film, then TV, then video... But actually in India and in most of the countries that form the global majority, obsolescence structures this. It is not like there is a linear progression of technology for everyone. A lot of people have access to tech which might not be current or new for a certain privileged class. One of my research sites was the Malegaon film industry. This was a DIY filmmaking culture where they made their own films, which had social messaging and were spoofs of Bollywood or Hollywood films. Analog video tech was the base infrastructure of this film industry. They used analog video to shoot and edit these films. It was really interesting that analog video, which was supposed to be very 1980s, 20 years later becomes the base for the industry in Malegaon. I saw this industry, as I was tracking it, changing from analog to digital and thought there seems to be a connection between the two. How can we understand digital culture through a historical perspective? I thought video might offer me clues to make sense of the present" - Ishita Tiwary, author, 'Video Culture in India; The Analog Era' talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that excavates an entirely forgotten cultural moment with its wedding videos, video libraries, godmen like Rajneesh who used the technology to gain an international following, video news magazines like Newstrack that documented everything from Mandal and Masjid to the militarization of Kashmir, and the video films featuring, among others, Aditya Pancholi and a pre-Rangeela Urmila Matondkar, that emerged from media magnate Nari Hira's company, Hiba.

"British India was what had been annexed before 1857. The rest of it was princely India, which formed 45 percent of the subcontinent, almost half. At school, we learn about what happened in British India but most of us don't know about what happened in the part ruled by rajas and nawabs even though it formed such a big part of the independence movement and transfer of power and so on. It's a key element of the story of independence but somehow, it doesn't figure in textbooks. The general idea we have is that the princely kingdoms were all backward and feudal. All of them were not like that. In fact, the first constitution in India was in a princely kingdom -- Baroda. Many princes were forward thinking — there was the Maharaja's temple entry proclamation in Travancore, some states like Mysore were industrialising... The idea that all of them were backward is not true. I have tried not to pass judgement. I have tried to humanise these people and see them from different perspectives...Nehru and Patel had nothing but disdain for the royal class but Patel was a practical person. He knew he had to get them on board to sigh their own death warrants. This book is a bit of history and geography. Had it not been for these events, the map of India would be very different. I have tried to not make it like reading a record but like watching a movie" - Mallika Ravikumar, author, '565; The Dramatic Story of Unifying India' talks to Manjula Narayan about how Sardar Patel, VP Menon and the hurriedly formed States Department managed to coax and, in some cases, force princely states like Tripura, Bikaner, Travancore, Bhopal, Jammu and Kashmir, Patiala and Hyderabad, among others, to join the Indian union in 1947.

As HT Smartcast completes 5 amazing years, we are re-releasing the most loved episode from this podcast. "People who are powerful and wealthy are always complex and layered characters," says Anirudh Kanisetti, author, Lords of the Deccan, in this Books & Authors' episode with Manjula Narayan, about the ambitious, adventurous, charismatic and bloodthirsty medieval dynasties of southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas.

"If you think about it deeply, everybody makes their own faith. No matter what faith they are from, everyone finds their own journey, their own truth, and they may mix and match things from different elements of different faiths and see what is true to them. Hinduism and Buddhism tend to be away from any springboard of certitude. They are more amorphous; you can make God whatever you want. A lot of people would say that the beauty of Hinduism is that it is not overly prescriptive. It is a different matter that some are trying to change that now. Still, its an organic religion. I wanted to contrast the various shades of it through the people that I interviewed and through the culture in which I had grown up. Even if you are non religious, religion and faith encumber everything in our country. It's not just politics but also in everyday things like going out for a meal and asking a vegetarian friend if it's ok that you eat meat, in how ritual ties into caste and how caste ties into identity. All of this we know but I wanted to go into it in a granular way and so this became a big book in the end! 'Tripping down the Ganga' is about the nature of everyday Hindu faith. It is a memoir; it is my journey and you can't separate the observer from what he or she observes. It is a subjective journey, in that sense" — Siddharth Kapila, author, Tripping Down the Ganga, talks to Manjula Narayan about going on yaatras with his mother to pilgrimage spots along the great river from Gaumukh to Ganga Sagar, the believers he met along the way, the experience as a liberal, city bred Hindu Indian of being both an insider and an outsider, the faultlines of caste and gender, and the sense of ecological doom that now hangs over many sacred spots in the Himalayas that are key to Hinduism.

"I don't think Dev Sahab and Goldie ever pretended they were making art but the artistry was inherent in what they were doing. 'Guide' (1965) is the daddy of all films. In it, Dev Anand's character just wanted to escape his past; he is not in search of the meaning of life. The meaning of life is thrust upon him. He's really the unwilling messiah. Goldie Sahab told me the story is a different beast from the screenplay. At that time, I shook my head as if I understood what he was saying. But it's only now that I am a practitioner that I realise, 'Oh, it was a mantra he was transmitting to me'. The screenplay and story are not the same. That's is why RK Narayan cribbed so much about 'Guide'. Watch the English 'Guide' [which was a flop] - that was the book. Watch the Hindi 'Guide'. It was different." - Tanuja Chaturvedi, author, 'Hum Dono; the Dev and Goldie Story' talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that touches on the professional collaboration of the Anand brothers, Dev and Goldie Anand, who, together, made some of the most memorable commercial Hindi films of the 1950s and 1960s, the power of vintage Hindi film music, and her experience of working at their production company, Navketan Films, as a young graduate fresh out of FTII.

"It struck me when I was doing the book that people preparing an Onam sadhya were putting together 25-30 dishes that were all gluten free and mostly vegan too. In fact, a sadhya can be fully vegan. The payasam can use almond or oats milk instead of regular cow's milk. Coconut yogurt will, of course, be the best substitute as it fits the flavour profile of the food. Ghee is perhaps the only thing that you will have to give up on. Unlike the old days, now people, even in Kerala, rarely cook the sadhya at home. They order it. I hope that my book will act as a trigger to get people to actually cook a sadhya. Because the process is engaging. There is a pattern to it. The way you cook it, the way you serve it... It's not like any other meal. It's almost like a ritual. There's also a lot of discipline that comes with serving a sadhya. You will find Ayurveda reflected quite elaborately in it. It is not about just shoving some food onto a banana leaf." - Arun Kumar TR, author, Feast on a Leaf; The Onam Sadhya Cookbook, talks to Manjula Narayan about the many delicious dishes that are part of an Onam celebration, the legend of Mahabali, his own childhood memories of the festival at his ancestral home that form the base of this book, and the imaginative use of yams, jackfruit and banana in Kerala sadhya cuisine.

"The earliest record of Northeast India is in the writing of Huen Tsang in the 7th century. So people have been going there for many centuries. The notion that people of only one ethnicity have lived in one place is really not true. Closer examination blows up this idea. It is an idea that has come with modernity. Modern identity and the modern idea of the nation state and the following nationalisms have been problematic in places that have deep and intertwined diversity like the Indian subcontinent. Maybe it made sense in a specific part of Europe in a specific time but the idea has been devastating for us. It led to the Partition but it did not end there. We have had insurgency after insurgency. Pakistan too has had the same challenge. Bangladesh is perhaps the only country that comes closest to that original idea. Northeast India has a history of separatist insurgencies that spring from the history of the place. The issue of identity, of belonging, is very complex. As a Bengali growing up in Shillong it was a very difficult topic of conversation. In fact, there was no conversation. The first book, 'Insider, Outsider; Tales of Belonging and Unbelonging in India's North East set it in motion. That concentrated more on Assam as the largest state in the region. This book focuses on the other states too. When putting this book together, we were not looking for atrocity propaganda. The intention was to encourage an internal dialogue within the different communities of the northeast. Hopefully, people read these pieces and understand others' histories and look at their own histories too" - Samrat Choudhury, co-editor, 'But I Am One of You; Northeast India and the Struggle to Belong' talks to Manjula Narayan about the many perspectives on a range of issues presented in this book including the decommissioning of the Gumti dam to aid ethnic reconciliation in Tripura, the Meitei Pangals or Meitei Muslims from Manipur, the Northeastern experience of being othered in New Delhi, Marwaris in Shillong during a dangerous time, and the Nepali speaking people of the different states of the Northeast, among others.

"Most people seem to think that if they cut 10 trees and then plant 100 trees they have atoned for their sins but ecologically that doesn't make sense. The best thing to do is to protect what we already have. There is a pushback from nature and we are all seeing the effects. When you cut old growth trees, it is going to be that much tougher to deal with climate change because these trees store enormous quantities of carbon. Even if you planted 100 other trees, by the time those grow, where will we be? The oldest tree in the world is more than 5000 years old and the oldest tree in India is about 2031 years old. Trees grow continuously until they die. They are a lesson to all of us -- that we need to keep ourselves intellectually and physically fit until we die or we will become obsolete and irrelevant. I want this book to make people relate to trees in a much bigger way than before. Western countries have their champion/heritage/iconic tree registers and there is a lot of public participation in updating them. We too must make our own tree registers at the village, district, state and finally, the national level. We must have a heritage tree register of India that's updated from time to time" – S Natesh, author, 'Iconic Trees of India' talks to Manjula Narayan about the country's many old and wonderful trees with their own fantastic history including the mother tree of the Dussehri mango in UP, the sacred rayan tree of Ranakpur, the coronation cypress of Norbugang in Sikkim, and the Mahabodhi tree in Bodhgaya under which Buddha attained enlightenment, among others.

"Millennials are unique in that every conflict or political situation that we see feels like it is at the same distance from us. So Manipur or the riots in Delhi feel at the same distance, which may or may not be great for political action. We were convinced that we could do things that were much more meaningful than any generation before us because of the tools that we had -- the Internet and the ability to share things with a billion people at once. That deluded us into thinking that we could actually change things! Millennials do have an inflated idea of their ability to change things and that drives a lot of anxiety because then we realise that we are powerless against most things. The millennial hero complex looked at from the outside can be cringe worthy" - AM Gautam, author, 'Indian Millennials; Who Are They Really' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from The Kashmir Files and grief at ecological deterioration to political action, free floating anxiety and the reaction to the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

"There is no reference to the biryani in the popular domain earlier than 125 years ago. Biryani was just one of the many varieties of pulao. One text tells us that no civilised gourmet in Lucknow touched biryani. They only ate yakhni pulao. So how has biryani become so important? Because if you are a show off and nouveau riche, you could show that, look, I've cooked something so expensive and exotic for my guests! Yes, the Nizams of Hyderabad, with the Hyderabadi dum ki biryani, did cultivate it into a very good art form. But the Nizams rose only after the decline of the Mughals so the biryani came from the Nizam who was experimenting with Turkish and Persian food. The food was from different directions. The biryani has been mythologised and mystified as an exotic dish so it has become aspirational. But a pulao is a pulao is a pulao and, with all due respect to biryani lovers, a biryani is a bit of a con! The biryani rose after 1857 to please the British. People wanted to go outside the pulao route and make it so complicated that it was like a jigsaw puzzle for them to unravel - ki kha kya rahe hai!" - Pushpesh Pant, author, 'Lazzatnama; Recipes of India' talks to Manjula Narayan about biryanis and pulaos, recipes of the Mahabharata, prawn poha, Kayasth mock meat dishes, North Eastern cuisine, kheers and khichdis, and how the modern kitchen has taken the drudgery out of cooking, among many other interesting things.

"The Great Nicobar Island Project will cause huge devastation in the landscape. Just 20 years ago, this was the epicentre of the earthquake and tsunami of December 2004. With this project, we are putting the island, the people and the ecology back in harm's way. These islands experience an earthquake a week. In 2004, precisely the spot where this port is coming up has seen a permanent subsidence of 15 feet. The lighthouse at Indira Point, which was in the forest is now surrounded by the sea. Even if we forget the indigenous people this will effect and the loss of 1 million trees that will be cut down for the project – though there is no reason to forget about them – if there's another tsunami, or another two feet of subsidence, the investment of Rs 72,000 crores will be completely lost." - @pankajsekh, editor, 'The Great Nicobar Betrayal' talks to @utterflea about the recklessness of the planned Great Nicobar Island project which will lead to the loss of primitive forests, undocumented biodiversity, ways of life of the Great Nicobarese and Shompen tribes, and of a huge chunk of public money.

"For people who grew up in the 1990s in Srinagar, the undercurrent of tension has always been our lived reality. This book is about how everyday normal lives also exist in Kashmir and how people navigate around the violence. It is about finding the tender moments in a city that is not 'normal'. The kind of pain that different people have felt in Kashmir has been different but the intensity of it is not something that you want pitched each against the other. Some people say Pandits had it worse because they had to leave. Others say Muslims had it worse because they had to stay and witness what happened over the last 30 years. But it's not a competition of who had it worse. It is horrible what happened to both communities. We have to move forward" - Sadaf Wani, author, 'City As Memory; A Short Biography of Srinagar' talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about life in a city that's seen much conflict, about marginalised sections of the populace, caste and class discrimination, the self surveillance of Kashmiri women, PTSD, the ongoing drug epidemic, the slow decline of the Kashmiri language, and collective and individual trauma.

"The mango truly is a natural obsession, like cricket or Bollywood or politics. Every Indian is an expert on the mango. Perhaps there's no other country in the world which has a comparable relationship with a fruit. But the excitement of the mango doesn't come from the fruit. It's an ancient thing and the reason the mango is so central to all matters of culture is because settlements across most of India had mango groves close by. They were not planted just for fruit. Fruit was one of the benefits. Primarily, the mango grove was infrastructure. It was where all manner of communal activities happened. That's the reason the mango was central. In India's many calendars, spring was the beginning of the new year and the mango was central to all spring festivals too. That's the reason it is so deeply enmeshed in our psyche. Because we've become deracinated and lost connection with all that, now the only discussion is about the fruit" - Sopan Joshi, author, Mangifera Indica; A Biography of the Mango talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from the loss of mango groves to creating flour from mango kernels, and Jesuit and Mughal experiments in horticulture.

"In the Indian-Chinese context, food is one of the battlegrounds. It's often the first thing that triggers parents of the couple. Both Indian and Chinese societies are patriarchal so the girl is considered as property and she is the one who has to face the most difficulties. However, in general, perhaps because of the single-child policy, women in China are quite empowered and their participation in the workforce is much higher than that for women in India. Much as we would like to think that these kinds of relationships break cultural barriers, break stereotypes, new types of stereotypes may also be formed. In the end, though, so much of our differences are individual and not attributable to stereotypes" - Shivaji Das and Yolanda Yu, co-authors of 'Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers' talk to Manjula Narayan about love and conflict within Indian-Chinese marriages.

"Last year, when Anita Mani of Indian Pitta Books contacted me and asked if we could update Snakeman (1989), which was about Rom Whitaker and his exploits with reptiles and about our life after we got married, I had to laugh a little bit. I said, "You know, it's a bit odd for a divorced wife to be singing the praises of her ex husband even though we continue to be colleagues and work very closely together because we are both committed to the projects that we started". Rom said there is a lot to write about and we have done a lot together after the divorce so why don't you write about all that. So the idea was to rewrite parts of Snakeman and then add the diaries of the years after that and up to the present. It's a valuable account of the conservation projects we've been involved with in the last 20 years. It was difficult on many levels. When you've lived with someone and been their wife for 20 years and then you are something else, there's a constant renegotiation of the tone. I was very happy when a friend said you've got the tone right. I still admire Rom - he's done so much for conservation in this country. I felt the follow up should also be written from my perspective. It's probably the most difficult writing I've ever done" - Zai Whitaker, author, Scaling Up talks to Manjula Narayan about her life at Chennai's Crocodile Bank, a crocodile called Jaws III, the Irular tribe, why snakes are important, and the many projects she is juggling at the moment.

"The history of drinking spices is older than the history of drinking tea, which is more recent in India. Drinking spices in hot water and in milk comes from the Ayurveda. As to when the marriage of these two happened, that's lost in history somewhere. In the West, people's palates are getting more accustomed to spices so there are more chai spice brands coming about and a lot of the blends are getting richer in spice. About the recipes, I really wanted to come up with ones that were simple to make, simple to bake. The idea was to put spices in everything. When you spice up cakes, they taste amazing to then why not put in the whole concoction of the tea? Masala chai cake makes so much sense," says Mira Manek, author, The Book of Chai that includes a history of chai drinking in India, stories of her own family's migrations from Gujarat to East Africa and the UK, and a range of recipes of regular Indian teatime favourites like chilli cheese toast and bhajias as well as fusion treats like Parle G cheesecake, chai fudge, and of course, Masala chai cake.

"The general greater acceptance of reservations in India as compared to the US comes from the acceptance of a karmic world view, the principle that you can't escape the consequences of your actions. Therefore, if your actions have been evil, then it is better to own up and do something to correct it and make amends. You find this idea of the karmic in the Manusmriti too. Yes, there's also a lot in the Manusmriti about jatis and marriage and caste, which is not appealing to a modern mind. But at least 40 smritis have been known to exist. The Manusmriti was just the one chosen by the British when they were looking at Hindu law. The smritis were a way of updating legislature, as it were, with changing times. It wasn't set in stone and there's an awareness within the tradition about this. In the end, we have to apply our judgement to both tradition and modernity." Arvind Sharma, author, From Fire to Light; Rereading the Manusmrti talks to Manjula Narayan about the amorphousness of religion in India, Ambedkar and Buddhism, the text's pronouncements about women and oppressed castes, and the context in which the Manusmriti was written.

"The problem of studying history is that we often think of history from today's point of view. When we look at history we must always look at the physical reality that existed at that particular time. The main reality of Nehru's time wasn't the threat from Pakistan or China or India's relations with the Soviet Union or the US. The biggest physical reality was hunger. Food is a strategic commodity as we see even now in Gaza and Ukraine. The Indian people did not create the Indian food crisis. It was a creation of the Allied war effort. Food had to be acquired. Nehru tried very hard to deal with the food security issue and reached out to many countries. India's first diplomats were actually food diplomats. This was the reality of that time" - Kallol Bhattacherjee, author, 'Nehru's First Recruits; The Diplomats Who Built Independent India's Foreign Policy' talks to Manjula Narayan about his compelling study of the Indian Foreign Service, the many individuals from varied backgrounds who formed part of it in the immediate post Independence period, the first evacuation of Indians during an international crisis, the evolution of the idea of Panchsheel, the 1962 war with China and the birth of Indian realism, the role of stenographers in the IFS, the battle of Surabaya that could have had an impact on Indian independence, and the many dynamics that were crashing against each other in the early days of the Indian republic.

"It's very easy to criticise the BJP government or the Mamta government for censorship. What we don't realise is we are doing the same thing on social media without allowing a certain kind of freedom of speech that is in disagreement with what we feel. But it is disagreement that produces culture! Amartya Sen said we are argumentative Indians. In the India we are in now, we are supposed to be agreementative Indians. We have to always agree with each other. And we have forgotten that consensus will never produce any philosophy." - Sumana Roy, author, 'Provincials; Postcards from the Peripheries' talks to Manjula Narayan about being a proud provincial, the difficulty of swimming against the current, bricolage as a literary device, the use of ossified jargon in academia, English literature departments forsaking beauty for the sociological approach, and the reductionism inherent in labelling writing.

"The book is about my story as somebody of mixed heritage. In many ways it's just the story of somebody trying to figure out who they are in a world that likes to separate and divide. the story of the book is about how, through discovering the origins of ideas, through discovering history, I discover a new way of thinking. So then it became easy for me to reconcile my mixed identity with my Englishness. Because actually, to be English is to be mixed. Then suddenly, it made sense. Identity is constantly in flux; it's an process to be engaged with constantly" - Jassa Ahluwalia, author, Both Not Half talks to Manjula Narayan about the experience of being both Punjabi and English in the UK, not changing his name when he became an actor, the many instances of mixed race actors passing for white in old Hollywood, Sikhism, nationalism, feeling a sense of kinship with transpeople, and being determined to change how the entertainment industry in the West represents people of mixed heritage.

"If you look at late 19th century photographs or sketches of Delhi, it is empty and treeless. It's a historical fact that the city's greenery has come with the development of urban settlements... My favourite Delhi garden is Sundar Nursery because there are always new trees to discover there" – Swapna Liddle and Madhulika Liddle, co-authors of Gardens of Delhi talk to Manjula Narayan about the capital's wonderful green oases from Lodhi Garden and Qudsia Bagh to Buddha Jayanti Park and The Garden of Five Senses, among many others.

"Social comedy usually has a very short span because it gets dated. For people to laugh at the same silly jokes, for social comedy to survive means that it's hit some enduring spot. I was trying to write a literary novel. It was a take on the Gothic novel and was about the relationship between Paro and Priya. In a way, Paro was Rebecca (in the eponymous novel by Daphe du Maurier), the beautiful and ruthless woman, and Priya was the archetypal counterpart, the woman who is more discreet and strategic perhaps, one who is more cunning and at the same time entranced by the freedom that someone like Paro represents. When it first came out, it got great reviews outside India but the Indian literary establishment spat at it. It took me by surprise how much they hated the book. I realise now that they hated it because it did not fit their idea of the exalted role of English literature. This was not the language of the rulers; it was the language of the users, the people who use English every day. They just didn't get it." - Namita Gokhale talks to Manjula Narayan about her first novel, Paro; Dreams of Passion, that's just been issued as a Penguin Modern Classic

"As a writer and art critic Rudolf von Leyden was able to mentor artists in a certain capacity but for artists to live, to sustain a life as an artist, they need to sell their work. They need patrons. Because of his corporate job, Rudi was able to support the work of the artists he liked – Ara, Husain, Hebber, Souza, Raza of the Progressive Artists Group" - Reema Desai Gehi, author, 'The Catalyst; Rudolf Von Leyden and India's Artistic Awakening' talks to Manjula Narayan about the man who promoted some of India's most eminent artists of the post Independence era, helped them through tough times and ensured they continued to produce great art.

"You can't leave caste behind but you can change religion so why won't you get attracted to another religion for whatever reasons? We are now paying too much attention to religious conversions. There are so many histories which run parallel within this one big history of the country and that's what makes the nation" - Nusrat F Jafri, author, 'This Land We Call Home' weaves the history of her family – her Bhantu maternal great grandparents who became Methodists, her grandparents who were Catholic, and her Shia Muslim parents – with that of India during the colonial period, the post Independence era and right down to the present, to present a view of a nation in flux.

"In 2010, I totally got wedded to Indian aesthetics. I decided to view art through the lens of the rasa theory. I went back to the Natya Shastra because that is where it all starts. When I look at art, I find a sense of immediacy, through emotion, through rasa. When you look at the work of Manjit Bawa or Swaminathan or Raza, our great modernists, why are they all still so relevant? Raza's way of looking at abstraction came from very Indic principles. From Raja Ravi Varma and Amrita Sher Gill to contemporary artists, there is an unbroken tradition. You see it even in our digital art. In India, the parallel trajectories of tradition, modernity and the contemporary are still continuing. We can't have a break with the past. Our traditions and roots are still present" - Alka Pande, author, '108 Portraits of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art' talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about being rooted in Indian aesthetics, new developments in Indian art, the role of the artist as a catalyst and a conscience keeper, museums as the new patrons and more

"The mytho-epic imagination is an integral part of the structure of our culture. The religious character of the mytho-epic imagination in the Indian subcontinent provides a shared collective unconscious," Manoj Kumar Jena, editor, 'Ways of Being Indian; Essays on Religion, Gender and Culture' talks to Manjula Narayan about the country's cultural diversity, death rituals, ways of mourning and the shift to public and shared mourning online, changes in matriliny among the Khasis, ideas of masculinity and the male sex worker, the African diaspora in India, and discrimination against queer individuals despite the recognition of other genders in ancient texts among other fascinating subjects that form the focus of this book.

"The history of tourism is intricately connected to colonialism. Travel writing is a direct descendent of colonial exploratory writing and even today, modern tourism has that DNA. Modern tourism, in its internal logic, has a colonial gaze. This idea of "discovering" other places is built into the idea of why we travel" - Shahnaz Habib, author, 'Airplane Mode; A Passive Aggressive History of Travel' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from wanderlust as consumerism in another form, vacations and the history of work, and medieval Ethiopia to former colonisers sheltering their citizens from their own history of violence and plunder, and how travel is now about the Fear of Missing Out

"Stories leave a deep impact on how our thinking is shaped. These stories are challenging some very traditional ideas that still exist heavily in society. There is a power in terrible representations. Somehow, we have representations where the disabled woman is a burden to family, to society, and to her partner. As a teenager you think, "Oh, somebody will have to sacrifice a lot to fall in love with me". Then, the more you grow and learn about yourself, you're like, 'What are these ridiculous representations?' It's almost like how we do funny representations of aliens!" - Nidhi Ashok Goyal, editor, 'And They Lived...Ever After; Disabled Women Retell Fairy Tales' talks to Manjula Narayan about the discrimination and simultaneous ungendering that disabled women face, being infantalised, the fatigue of sensitisation, the neglect and isolation that are often everyday experiences, and the great power of stories to change how people think about themselves and others.

"Villages are complicated entities. There's always a power game. Now, money values have come in and villages are also changing. The lives between the village and the city are starting to merge. I don't know what that means for the country. Villages and cities are both equally important for us. Some kind of continuity is what the village offers. People who live in villages and don't want to move or change may have something to tell us in the long run" - Mamang Dai, author, 'In Search of the Indian Village', talks to Manjula Narayan about the powerful stories of OV Vijayan and Mahashweta Devi, the writings of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar on rural settlements, and the place of the village in the Indian imagination on the Books & Authors podcast.

"While we must read histories produced by historians who have different perspectives on the past, it is very important not to get trapped in any particular ideological framework. For me, it is important to move beyond them" - Upinder Singh, author, 'A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India', talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast on everything from the implausibility of the Aryan invasion theory and the place of forests and their inhabitants in the political history of ancient India to the Harappan script, war elephants, the faulty periodization of Indian history and more.

"Strangers matter online. We tend to put a lot of weight on reviews. But it is difficult to tell which ones are fake and which are not. Computer scientists are still working on it. But they have figured out certain characteristics of fake reviews – like the use of lots of exclamation marks and quotation marks" - Abhishek Borah, author, Mine Your Language, talks to Manjula Narayan about the influence of language on business, how to tell if an individual is a potential loan defaulter just from the words he uses, the communication patterns of charismatic leaders, how corporates should deal with social media firestorms, and the surprising impact of expletives in online reviews, among other interesting things!

I'm not an expert but I am a connoisseur and most of the carpets in this book are part of my collection. Carpets harbour a lot of stories but we seldom read about them because books on carpets usually focus on things like the knots used and how they were made. My idea was to keep the stories" - Jon Westborg, author, 'Of Carpets and Carpetwallahs' talks to Manjula Narayan about talims and carpet designs, the history of carpet weaving in the subcontinent, which, apparently, stretches back to 2C BCE, jail carpets in the colonial period, the carpet of a Norwegian who served as a policeman in Belgaum in colonial India, and the genius Kashmiri carpetwallah, the late Sayeed Ali, who could tell the age and province of origin just by looking at a Persian carpet

"Every culture's sexual values get imbued into all parts of their thinking, not just into how they think about the bedroom. Under patriarchy, mothers are given this special role of restricting their daughters as sexuality is tied up with the sense of social pride or izzat – the mother's value as a mother, within the family, is partly judged on her daughter's gender performance. I don't blame mothers for doing this because, in their minds, their sense of identity is dependent on their daughters' behaviour. So they groom their daughters accordingly. There is also envy between women of different generations." -Amrita Narayanan, psychoanalyst and author, 'Women's Sexuality and Modern India; In a Rapture of Distress' talks to Manjula Narayan about rejecting victimhood, the universal nature of women's sexual oppression, the difficulty in understanding different sexual tastes, endurance as a virtue, and identifying with myths, among other things

"AI doesn't create; it reproduces. AI doesn't know what is good or bad; even in art, it doesn't know. People want to know whether we'll reach a level where AI is as smart as we are. The kids are always asking me that. We won't reach that level the way we 're going because the intuition is just not there" - Appupen, co-author of the graphic novel, 'Dream Machine; AI and the REAL World' talks to Manjula Narayan about collaborating on this book with French scientist and CEO of an AI start-up, Laurent Daudet, AI's huge energy needs, how, since all the big tech is owned by corporates instead of colleges, labs or government set-ups, the focus is just about making profit and not scientific advancement, and how vast quantities of our information is going towards training AI.

Crime fiction seems to have a steady presence because of the way in which it is able to address contemporary issues of law and order relating also to the absence of justice, which is a key problem we all face. The attempt is to make amends, sometimes even outside the system, and to deliver justice. That's why, perhaps, the figure of the detective continues to fascinate" - Tarun K Saint, editor, 'The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction Vols 1 & 2' talks to Manjula Narayan about curating anthologies, the emergence of detective fiction informed by feminist consciousness, how writers from the Indian subcontinent contextualise the methods of the classic whodunit and take it beyond the formulaic.

"The thrill of the hunt is what fuels all collecting probably and it's certainly so for book collecting. But here the interest is bibliographical so there's a scholarly component to it as well. It's a very thrilling experience to see that you are a part of a long tradition of book collecting and of a tradition of transactions between dealers and collectors that's been going on for three or four centuries." - Pradeep Sebastian, author, An Inky Parade; Tales for Bibliophiles, talks to Manjula Narayan about his passion for collecting antiquarian books, the passions that drive the international trade, and the great collectors and their obsessions

Like the pizza, momos are traditional, ethnic, and are loved worldwide" - Rohini Rana, author, 'The Nepal Cookbook; 108 Regional Recipes', talks to Manjula Narayan about the magic of eating with your fingers, the humble potato, magical momos in their many avatars, the flavours of fermentation and smoking, and the subtility and great range of Nepal's cuisine.

"Dr Salim Ali told me, if you're not a scientist, don't show off your secondhand scientific knowledge. Just write simply and share that. So that's what I've done" - Bulbul Sharma, author, 'Sunbirds in the Morning, Grey Hornbills at Dusk' talks to Manjula Narayan about the variety of birds and trees and the dramatic change of the seasons in the capital city.

"I've heard its changed but when I was first in Tibetan regions, it was illegal to have a photo of the Dalai Lama. There's a lot of propaganda against the Dalai Lama and other lamas in China and I've actually heard Tibetan people there parroting that propaganda. There's also tremendous ecological damage through mining, the building of large dams and other forms of destructive resource extraction. It's not happening only in Tibet. I am trying to communicate a template of what we seem to be witnessing all across the world. I did feel at times that I was physically being pummeled by what I was observing" - Scott Ezell, author, 'Journey to the End of the Empire; In China Along the Edge of Tibet' talks to Manjula Narayan about travelling through Tibet, the vast changes taking place there, the world's move towards uniformity and extreme ecological degradation in the Anthropocene and how we are all implicated.

"The community of corpse burners or Doms take pride in their ability to give moksh but it's also a way of justifying their place in a society that otherwise shuns them, humiliates them and treats them as untouchables. They believe they have religious capital. But at the end of the day, there are no privileged caste people who want to do this job. That's why the Doms are continuing to do this job and that's why they are not able to break through the caste barrier" - Radhika Iyengar, author, Fire on the Ganges talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that documents the customs, harrowing work and lives of the keepers of the sacred fire, the Doms of Varanasi

I keep thinking of all the other writers who also have these sorts of protagonists. The cops of Karen Slaughter, Ian Rankin and Peter James are not exactly happy guys who are at peace with the world; their relationships are in shambles; they are eccentric. It's probably like taking the mad genius idea and remoulding it to fit the flawed cop. I know this character, Borei Gowda, so well; I know what he can do and what he can't do. His own flaws allow him to see the world with a certain cynicism. But then every cynic is maybe also a naive idealist. In many ways, Bangalore and Gowda are synonymous with each other" - Anita Nair, author, Hot Stage, talks to Manjula Narayan about writing a police procedural series, how personal agendas often drive even political crimes, and creating believable characters with familiar tics and hypocrisies

"Poetry is not instant coffee; that is undrinkable. What is slow brewed coffee or a tea ceremony? Everything is slow, which means you can appreciate the nuances of the sounds, the cadence of the language, the content of the poems. The good young poets and the good older poets are not very dissimilar. That's because the focus of these poets is grounded on the same things and measured on the same framework: originality of thought, width of creativity, good grammar and a cogent argument. These are the elements that make good writing." - Sudeep Sen, editor, 'Converse; Contemporary English Poetry by Indians' talks to Manjula Narayan about writing in English, poetry as a tough space, attempting to build a community of poets, and the effort that goes into putting together a good anthology.

"Within Rajasthan's Raika culture, camels are raised in a system that's cruelty free - the calves are not separated from their mothers, camels walk around and choose their own diets and have a close relationship with humans. It's an alternative model of livestock and food production that has great value. The Raika demonstrate a way of keeping animals that's in tune with the environment and has high animal welfare standards. It should be a model for the rest of the world. Slowly, we are getting to the stage where people are recognising this. Modern India's thinking about livestock needs to be decolonised because India's traditional livestock keeping systems are a treasure. There's enormous heritage value in them and this intangible heritage also creates wealth and has a lot of commercial potential. What's missing is an appreciation of the value of this heritage. I don't regret that I've been here for the last 30 years." - Ilse Kohler-Rollefson, author, Camel Karma talks to Manjula Narayan about her work with the camel herders of Rajasthan, the great health benefits of milk from free-range camels, and why sustainable methods of livestock farming make more sense.

"Nehru and Ambedkar represented two very different visions of the way Buddhism could be imagined. Buddhism is a full-fledged revolution for Ambedkar and Nehru's government was not comfortable with that sort of vision of Buddhism. [Similarly] there is a fracture between the Ambedkarite vision of Buddhism and SN Goenka's vision, in which you can be a Hindu or Christian and still practise Vipassana. It unfolds in a wider ecumenical, secularised idea of what a modern India could be like, and I think those two trajectories are really difficult to reconcile. In its totality, what I really wanted to do was paint a picture of all walks of Buddhist life -- the lives of labourers who were inspired to convert to Buddhism, of intellectuals, of both Sanatan Hindus, who had a certain vision of Buddhism, as well as liberal, more secular-minded Hindus, of progressives, Leftists and Right Wing figures... I wanted to understand the whole composite picture of what Buddhism looked like during this broader period of time."

"In our family, whenever anyone goes out, they don't ask him, 'What did you see?' The first question is 'What did you eat?' So, food is paramount. In my childhood, if ever I wanted to have good food at home, I'd ask my father for it. Funnily enough, it was the men in the family who took on that role. My father is a very passionate cook. I felt that there should be some place where his recipes are documented because everyone in the family has memories associated with his food" - Shreeparna Khaitan, author, 'Bapu's Curries' talks about her father lawyer Umesh Khaitan's culinary repertoire that includes traditional Marwari dishes and fantastic fusion ideas even as co-author Surbhi Anand reveals plans to bring out another volume for the many great dishes that didn't make it to this one. From Rajasthani ker sangri ka saag to delicious santare ka jhol (soupy orange curry) and gucchi biryani (biryani with Kashmiri morels), the food ideas in this volume are both delightful and surprising.

"Hindutva pop stars are trying to make hate entertaining and so normalized that people don't realise they are consuming propaganda. They are changing your life through their work and yet most know very little about them" - Kunal Purohit, author, 'H-Pop; The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars' follows a singer, a poet and a journalist-spiritual coach to understand polarisation, points of radicalisation, the Hindutva plus bloc, and why it's necessary to understand the dominant political ideology

The idea of the old and the new has always had an interesting relationship with the city of Delhi; the name 'Delhi' has been shifting from site to site. I'd say the Qutub Minar and the Meherauli Archeological Park are the most important sites. If you look at the Qutub Minar complex you can understand a lot about the evolution of architecture and culture in Delhi, and also about Indian history and the historical underpinnings of what we call our composite culture" - Swapna Liddle, author, 14 Historic Walks of Delhi, talks to Manjula Narayan on this week's Books & Authors podcast about the new and updated edition of her very popular book, the history of Delhi's many cities, Metcalfe's bizarre holiday home, Nizamuddin Auliya's pronouncements, the jugaad in the false arches of the Qutub Minar, and about successfully bridging the gap between serious academic history and the general public.

For women of a certain class, there was a tremendous romance attached to Indian swamis and gurus. That's perhaps because gurus of that time presented themselves as an antidote to the very stiff, rigid idea of manhood that prevailed in Victorian and Edwardian society. What could be more romantic than this figure talking about liberation and enlightenment experiences? For these people it was as if Jesus was walking on the earth again. That had an attraction to women who were educated but were not able to pursue careers and do the things that women take for granted today. Yoga is probably the longest lasting legacy of what happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Minds in the West were considerably broadened by the sense of spiritual enquiry and that was a tremendous benefit to people." - Mick Brown, author, The Nirvana Express talks to Manjula Narayan about Indian gurus and the West's search for enlightenment

Ever since my release, I've been thinking of what can be done to improve the situation in prisons. One of the byproducts of people like us going to jail is that we get a glimpse into the world behind bars. If we are able to do even a little bit to help that, this book would be very much worth it" - Sudha Bharadwaj, author, 'From Phansi Yard; My Year With the Women of Yerawada' talks to Manjula Narayan about the need to improve the quality and accountability of legal aid, to make psychological counselling available in prisons, the collectivising of housework, keeping her sense of humour alive in trying times, the tragic consequences of girls being brought up to make relationships the centre of their lives, the police habit of holding female family members hostage for the crimes of absconding gangsters, how her book could serve as a manual to improve Indian jails, and much more.

"What we assume is gut instinct when it comes to the cooking of our mothers and grandmothers is actually hours and hours of practice. They didn't have much choice, they had to cook. So, just by dint of spending 10,000 hours on something, you become good at it. Really, someone who develops a recipe is a scientist and someone who cooks at home and makes delicious food is a chemical engineer" - Krish Ashok, author, 'Masala Lab; The Science of Indian Cooking' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from the influence of flavour memories and the wisdom of Ratatouille to electronic pressure cookers, instant food and how his strategic laziness as a software engineer helped him write this book.

"There is so much diversity in one plate of a chaat dish and there is so much diversity from one end of the country to the other. In a plate of chaat, there are differences in texture, temperature, colour, spices and condiments. Chaat, for me, is an ideal representation of what Indian food stands for" - Sonal Ved, author, 'India Local; Classic Street Food Recipes' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from pani puri, ragda patties and lal aloo Wai Wai to jinni dosa, phaley, kathi rolls and other fantastic street foods from across the nation and her own amazing street-inspired recipes too

"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 in the creation of spaces and in the experience of space for the people who visit these shrines. The jali, for me, also becomes a kind of key to the way the mind thinks in India -- not always directly approaching things but through layers, filters and frameworks that exist" - Navina Najat Haider, author, 'Jali; Lattice of Divine Light in Mughal Architecture' talks to Manjula Narayan about palaces, Sufi shrines, contemporary jalis, the traditional craftsmen whose skills continue to be passed down through generations, and more

"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 perfume smell of anything but the connotations remain and they are very strong" - Divrina Dhingra, author, The Perfume Project talks to Manjula Narayan about the wonderful fragrances of sandalwood and vetiver, rose, jasmine and saffron, how towns like Kannauj and Madurai continue to be important centres of the creation and trade in specific perfumes, the complexities of Kashmiri saffron, the skilled craftsmen at the centre of it all, the impact of climate change and changing land use, and the personal associations that make individuals prefer specific scents

"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. That was the framework within which this book was planned. I also wanted to focus on the journeys of these women and not just the outcomes, which is why the long form essay was the perfect form in which to do this book" - Anita Mani, editor, Women in the Wild; Stories of India's Most Brilliant Women Wildlife Biologists talks to Manjula Narayan on The Books & Authors podcast.

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 will have interesting spatial consequences. The manner in which New Media has integrated all kinds of settlements, there is a tendency for smaller level settlements to persist for much longer. There might even be a reverse trend. We are now living in a new tech age which might produce new kinds of settlement patterns" - Surinder S Jodhka, author, The Indian Village; Rural Lives in the 21st Century, talks to Manjula Narayan about how the idea of the Indian village as a never changing space was a colonial one, the great changes happening in the country's villages, patterns of migration, and the persistence, even expansion, of the rural in contemporary India.

"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 he says is there is only 1 truth and there is only one reality and what is the point of these useless and stupid arguments and fights? In that way, he is unifying, but he isn't interested in social brotherhood or harmony. He talks about something much higher than that. So, everyone uses Kabir for their own agenda. And that is OK" - Vipul Rikhi, author, 'Drunk on Love; The Life, Vision and Songs of Kabir' talks to Manjula Narayan on this week's Books & Authors podcast.

"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 Management Myths with Logic, Experience and Curiosity' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from multitasking and toxic managers to risk management and anticipating the future.

"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 else's story and translate that and hopefully, give that story back to her" - Shikha Malaviya, author, 'Anandibai Joshee; A Life in Poems' talks about giving a voice to India's first woman doctor through her poetry.

"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 Hindutva, being brought up as a "coconut", Rajiv Gandhi as India's most misunderstood PM, standing up for Nehruvian values, the need to talk to Pakistan, and why he will never stop speaking his mind

"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 continued as a Brahmin-Bania party, which it used to be known as" - Neerja Chowdhury, author, 'How Prime Ministers Decide', talks to Manjula Narayan about Indira Gandhi's religiosity, the central issues that each Indian PM has grappled with, Manmohan Singh and the Indo-US Nuclear deal, the friendship between Vajpayee and PV Narasimha Rao, Sonia Gandhi asking VP Singh and Vajpayee for advice and much more.

"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 cultural, linguistic, religious and political histories of each of the states of northeast India, how the region became a part of India as a result of the Anglo-Burmese wars, the genesis of the idea of India itself, the ignored history of slavery in the subcontinent, and the need to avoid airbrushing the past.

"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 get away from. Writers in our country have taken that reality head on and grappled with it, and have never flinched or looked away. These are the stories that continue to tell you the things that matter" - Arunava Sinha, editor, The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told, talks to Manjula Narayan about translation, pan Indianism, literature from different parts of the country, and how editing a volume of short fiction like this one is an intense experience.

"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 to be aware of our past. We need to look at the oral traditions we have inserted in our lives and think, "Is this the way?" We can create a new world of solidarity without competition as men against women." - Mineke Schipper, author, Hills of Paradise, which looks at power, powerlessness and the female body, talks about sexist proverbs from Europe, China, Africa and India, the power of ancient myth in modern life, and the way towards a more equal world.

"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 healthy food that makes you feel good inside, you are cutting down stress right away" - Kavita Devgan, author, '500 Recipes; Simple Tricks for Stress-Free Cooking' talks to Manjula Narayan about food memories, the pluses of including mushrooms and buckwheat in your diet, giving in to occasional cravings for sabudana, and opting for variety on your plate

"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.

"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 from an affluent background. They just assume you are well off because you are fluent in English. Nobody asks you about your background." - Manish Gaekwad, author, The Last Courtesan, talks to Manjula Narayan about his mother, who was trafficked as a child and her subsequent life as an entertainer in Calcutta and at Foras Road in 1990s Bombay, and about writing a memoir about her life.

"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 be done" - Vincent Doumeizel, author, The Seaweed Revolution, talks to Manjula Narayan about the many applications of seaweed including in promoting food security, improving health, in the creation of environmentally friendly clothing, in building materials and in combating pollution, among other things.

"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. Nature has so many things and we are only scraping the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we see." - Vivek Menon, author, 'Indian Mammals; A Field Guide' talks to Manjula Narayan about the wild asses of Kutch, bats as great pollinators, India having the largest squirrels in the world, and about putting together this impressive volume that includes in depth information about every known mammal in the country from the tiny shrew to the large elephant.

"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 community of the area, offers glimpses of life in a mofussil prison, and underlines the fragility and randomness of life.

"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

"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

"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 reintroduction.Books & Authors podcast with Divyabhanusinh, author, The Story of India's Cheetahs

"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 of the city that's now in the British Museum and what it tells us about the old walled city, its neighbourhoods, its social life and individual citizens both aristocratic and ordinary.

"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

"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 the Panchatantra's biggest selling points" - Meena Arora Nayak, author of a new retelling of The Panchatantra of Vishnusharma talks to Manjula Narayan about this wonderful collection of stories first compiled around 300BCE, and how they are essentially about the human quest for happiness

"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 transformation from being a resource-conservative country to a resource-consumptive one, the great influence of Masterchef Australia, the evolution of India's wines and cheeses, the role of food apps, and the great change that's happening with Indians discovering the country's varied regional cuisines.

"The idea of a suitable religion for democracy strengthened Ambedkar's view of Buddhism. His conversion was not just intellectual but also emotional and spiritual" - Ashok Gopal, author, 'A Part Apart; The Life and Thought of BR Ambedkar', talks to Manjula Narayan about his mammoth work. Tune in to now!

Listen to Manjula Narayan discuss with Anirudha Bhattacharjee, author, 'Basu Chatterji and Middle of the Road Cinema' about how this book tells us many inside stories about the ace director’s films. The anecdotes are not restricted to trivia and behind-the-scene occurrences, as films like Saara Aakash, Piya Ka Ghar, Rajnigandha, Chhoti Si Baat, Chitchor, Manzil, Khatta Meetha, Swami, Priyatama, Baton Baton Mein, Shaukeen and Chameli Ki Shaadi are analysed in detail, even with a mention of their flaws. His shift to television with Rajani, starring Priya Tendulkar, and his work in other Doordarshan serials such as like Ek Ruka Hua Faisla and Byomkesh Bakshi are deal with too. Tune in to know more!

Listen to Manjula Narayan discuss with Avijit Ghosh, author, 'When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala' about the 1980s in Hindi cinema, it was the decade of the dark and powerful police drama Ardh Satya. It was the decade of the kitschy excess of the action comedy Himmatwala. It was a decade of opposites. It was a time of furious change beyond the silver screen, video cassettes brought cinema to drawing rooms and bedrooms; television and one-day cricket emerged as fierce competition to films; piracy put movie theatres in crisis; film stars were elected to the Indian Parliament in surprising numbers.

Listen to Manjula Narayan discuss with the Aashima Dogra, co-author of Lab Hopping, how from Bhopal to Bhubaneswar, from Bangalore to Jammu, she and her co author Nandita Jayaraj engage in thought-provoking conversations with renowned scientists like Gagandeep Kang, Rohini Godbole, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Prajval Shastri, as well as researchers at earlier stages of their scientific careers.

“We can write on Ancient Indian History but that doesn't mean you are finished knowing all there was to know.“ The history of India through 75 objects is a curation of objects from the prehistoric ages through twenty-first century India, author Sudeshna Guha provides a panoramic view of the rich histories of the subcontinent to the host Manjula Narayan. The incisive essays in this collection detail not just the objects but the histories of their reception: examining how changing times and attitudes cast their shadow on the ways in which the past is interpreted and narrated. In doing so, A History of India through 75 Objects inspires us to interrogate our own notions of a knowable past and fixed national history. Teeming with thought-provoking insights and surprising anecdotes, the essays instill a sense of wonder about the continuous processes by which histories are constructed.

"I've always been a crime beat reporter and I've met a lot of funny characters," says Srinath Rao, author, 'Meow Meow', which looks at the story of alleged drug dealer Baby Patankar, who dominated the news cycle in March 2015. He talks to Manjula Narayan about the blackly comic true crime story set in Mumbai that features drug dealers, crooked policemen, double crossed lovers and large hauls of Mephedrone that incredibly turn out to be Ajinomoto!

"Stories about migration, some of which date back several thousands of years and some of which are much more current, still play a toxic role in the politics of South Asia. But every country has its really odd set of migration narratives. The modern narrative on migration is so messed up that it's impossible to attack it head-on. I've tried to do that by pulling back into history in which some of the absurdity shines through" - Sam Miller, author, Migrants; The Story of Us All talks to Manjula Narayan about his new book, that presents the historical movements of everyone from the Vikings, African Americans, and the Jews to the Yahgans, Pocahontas and the Chinese

"The whole history of photography from an archival point of view is not just the history of the nation or the world; it's also the history of the changing means of representation and the changing ways of producing images. We should not flatten visual history to a linear narrative. We have to think of it as multi-nodal and cross-pollinatory to a great extent," says Rahaab Allana, editor, 'Unframed; Discovering Image Practices in South Asia' that includes interviews with lens-based artists from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and varied pieces on the visual culture of South Asia by critics, curators and

The period leading up to 1857 in Delhi is written about in very contradictory terms. Sometimes it is called the last flicker before the candle goes out. But this is the high point of Urdu literature and poetry; it is the lifetime of Ghalib, Momin, Zauq, Bahadur Shah, and of Delhi college. It is also the time of the total decline of the Mughal dynasty. There were so many interesting things happening yet it is talked about in cliches. Earlier colonial historians pushed the idea that the period was decadent because it served to then justify British rule and the belief that it was needed for India to progress.

"India has taken off as a country in the last 30 years and as India continues to become a more significant force in world politics, the art follows through. We, as collectors, are enjoying the benefits of that. A lot of museums are now very interested in Indian art, which wasn't the case 20 years ago. I think the standing of the nation in the world is projected onto its art and culture." - Umesh Gaur, whose art collection is the subject of Paper Trails; Modern Indian Works on Paper

"I wouldn't say that everything I've written in this memoir is true. Some of it has been added on, invented, embellished. It's been a long process of remembering and becoming as I remembered. This is why I talk about the boundary between memory and fiction being blurred; because while you are writing something, there is some other process that takes over." - Sara Rai, author, Raw Umber, talks to Manjula Narayan about her memoir that touches on growing up in Allahabad, her grandfather Premchand, the ordinariness of death, and drawing from a pool of languages in her writing.

"Dals have been a part of the human diet for centuries and they are a substitute for more expensive animal-based proteins, and they are also very diverse and versatile. Dals are actually used all over the world. After my book on biryanis, my family urged me to work on another book and we decided on this because dals are an intrinsic part of everyday cooking in every Indian home" - Pratibha Karan, author, The Book of Dals, talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Telangana sambar and Maharashtrian amti to puran poli, papads, payasams, Kashmiri dals and rajma chawal, among many other fantastic preparations made from lentils.

"One of the principles of Ashoka's dhamma is tolerance and respect for all religions and that really impressed me. Also, the whole idea of inscribing messages on rocks may have come from the Middle East. The Persians did this, but when they did it, they were bragging. They said things like, 'I, Darius, conquered all these people; I slaughtered these people; I built these cities.' They were bragging about it but Asoka uses the same medium not to brag but to tell people to live better lives and he's kind of sad that they don't do so. He's really unique in history. I can't think of any other ruler who's done this," - Coleen Taylor Sen, author, Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty talks to Manjula Narayan about Ashoka, his grandfather Chandragupta, the Arthashastra, the rock edicts, the figure of Ashoka in Buddhist texts, the colonial effort that reinstated him as a major figure in Indian history, and his significance and place in contemporary India.

"It's not the picture of Vivekananda that people have but he was extremely funny. He tried not to be too hard on the Americans so he did a lot with humour and teasing" - Ruth Harris, author, Guru to the World; The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda talks to Manjula Narayan about the connections Vivekananda forged in Europe and America, his guru Ramakrishna, the contribution of his disciple Sister Nivedita, and his own radicalism and rejection of orthodoxy.

"History has become a big bone of contention in our society. A lot of people are excited by chewing on that bone of contention and I'm very happy about that. People who are writing for serious general audiences are doing a great service but I think that those kinds of books also need to be reviewed very seriously by people who are familiar with those fields and are able to do some amount of public introspection on the art of writing history, on the method of interpretation, and the impact of certain ways of telling narratives on the current struggle over how we tell India's histories." - Annapurna Garimella, editor, The Long Arc of South Asian Art, talks to Manjula Narayan about the essays in the volume that touch on a wide range of subjects including 18th century Udaipur painting, the ancient St Thomas crosses of Kerala, the Shiva temple established by Tamil traders in China in the late 13th century, and Queen Victoria's picturesque Indian servants

"The elite local forces that the CIA had established and operated with since the early years of the war in Afghanistan were both effective and very brutal, and were responsible for scores of civilian deaths" - Andrew Quilty, author, August in Kabul, talks to Manjula Narayan about the 10 years he spent covering the country, trying to presents facts so the reader can draw her own conclusions, death of Indian photographer Danish Siddiqui, the suicide bombing among the crowd at Kabul airport desperate to escape the Taliban, and the militia killings of Talibs in the chaos that accompanied the American withdrawal from the country.

"I always try to bring in a people's history point-of-view into my work. So, in the telebhaja, sweets, and the dak bungalow sections, I have mentioned the people who created the dishes. I like to bring in their stories to make it more human. The lives of the makers are equally important to me," says Nilosree Biswas, author, Calcutta On Your Plate. She talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about everything from Bengali sweets, the history of cookbooks, the influence of Awadhi cuisine via Wajid Ali Shah on Bengali food and how the Victorian "good wife" code was transported to the bhadralok and the effect it had on the region's food culture. Tune in!

"People come from all over the country to Mumbai and it is cosmopolitan. But if you look at the history of the city, there has been tremendous violence and communities have clashed every 10-15 years," says Jitendra Dixit, author, Bombay After Ayodhya, which chronicles events that affected the city over the last 30 years. The journalist who has experienced and covered many of the events that form part of the narrative of this book talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about the city's gang wars, communal riots, police encounters, the real estate boom and increased ghettoisation, natural disasters, and the unionisation of Bollywood that could push the industry out of the city.