Stories: India
Stories connected to India.
- He carved a shortcut through a hill.Dashrath Manjhi cut a path through a rocky ridge in India using a hammer and chisel. The work is reported to…
- This ancient temple may have collapsed under its own weight.India's Jethani Temple survives as scattered pillars and sculpture. Scholars consider its unusual, experiment…
- Roll it flat, fry it, and watch it puff up.Luchi is a Bengali flatbread made with refined wheat flour. Each round is fried in hot oil until it fills wit…
- Generations of rulers in one painting. A few years later, the kingdom fell.The House of Bijapur, painted around 1680, gathered the dynasty's rulers in one image. The Bijapur sultanate…
- She wrote Punjabi advice columns. Then she advised a British food chain.Kailash Puri wrote about cooking, family life and sexual questions in Punjabi-language magazines. After movin…
- His target was not an army. It was Poverty, made into a person.A Mughal miniature from about 1616–1618 shows Emperor Jahangir standing on a globe and shooting arrows at the…
- She escaped occupied Hong Kong. Then kept nursing across Asia.US-born Elsie Chin nursed the wounded during the 1941 battle for Hong Kong. After the Japanese occupation, sh…
- A Doctor Who story set at Partition changed even the closing theme.The 2018 episode Demons of the Punjab takes place around the 1947 Partition of India. Its score uses instrume…
- In some Indian rituals, two trees can be married.Ceremonial marriages between different tree species, and between people and trees, are practiced in parts of…
- A toilet museum even has poetry about toiletsNew Delhi’s Sulabh International Museum of Toilets presents the history of sanitation. Alongside toilet-relat…
- Pachisi’s name remembers a shell scoreIndian pachisi takes its name from the Hindi word for twenty-five. Under the six-cowrie rules, a throw with n…
- Payeng kept planting after the first small attemptIn 1979, Jadav Payeng saw dead snakes on a treeless sandbar in Assam, India. He planted twenty bamboo seedlin…
- A hundred beads helped count a survey journeyNineteenth-century surveyor Nain Singh and colleagues trained for British expeditions to Tibet. A prayer-bead…
- He arrived for running in a three-piece suitFauja Singh turned up for his initial coaching dressed in a three-piece suit. His coach had to start with the…
- Kerala’s tiger dance puts the stripes on human performersPulikali, meaning tiger dance, is a folk performance from Kerala, India. During Onam and other celebrations,…
- A burden with a purposeDuring Thaipusam, Tamil devotees carry kavadi burdens in devotion to Murugan. Offerings can include pots of m…
- At Holi, people splash colour on one anotherHoli is a Hindu festival celebrated in India and Nepal, associated with spring, love and the victory of good…
- A rhinoceros inspired wigs in eighteenth-century ParisClara, an Indian rhinoceros, arrived in Rotterdam in 1741 and was exhibited across Europe. In Paris in 1749 s…
- This burrowing frog also eats below the surfaceThe purple frog of India’s Western Ghats has a rounded body and pointed snout. It spends much of its life und…
- His secret sculpture garden survived a threat of demolitionIn his spare time, Nek Chand gathered demolition waste and built a sculpture garden in woodland in Chandigarh…
- Two neighbours began picking up a beach’s accumulated rubbishIn October 2015, Mumbai lawyer Afroz Shah and his neighbour Harbansh Mathur started clearing rubbish from Ver…
- Children visit homes singing during a winter festivalAt Lohri, a winter festival associated with Punjab, children go from house to house singing and receiving tre…
- A solar-training programme does not require literacyBunker Roy’s initiative, founded in India in 1972, became known as Barefoot College. Its programmes teach rur…
- This nineteenth-century service was more than hair washingIndian-born Dean Mahomed opened a vapour-bath and massage business in Brighton in 1814. Its shampooing involv…
- Pushkar’s fair includes a long-moustache contestPushkar Fair in Rajasthan, India, combines livestock trading and pilgrimage to the lake. Alongside cultural p…