Ever wondered why your grandmother threw a teabag into the pressure cooker while boiling chickpeas, or why she measured using the knuckle of her index finger? Why does a counter-intuitive pinch of salt make your kheer more intensely flavourful? What is the Maillard reaction and what does it have to do with fenugreek? What does your high-school chemistry knowledge, or what you remember of it, have to do with perfectly browning your onions?Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd's...

The history of India's struggle for freedom is usually told from the perspective of the non-violent movement. Yet, the story of armed resistance to colonial occupation is just as important. Names such as Vinayak Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose are still widely remembered. Their story is almost always presented as acts of individual heroism and not as part of a wider movement that had a...

Vir Sanghvi's has been an interesting life - one that took him to Oxford, movie and political journalism, television and magazines - and he depicts it with the silky polish his readers expect of him. In A Rude Life, he turns his dispassionate observer's gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells us about all that he's experienced, and nothing more for he's still a private man. He unhurriedly recounts memories from his childhood and college years, moving on to give us an understanding of how ...

The floods that devastated large parts of Kerala in 2018 were not an isolated, freak phenomenon; rather, they signalled something graver-the ecological devastation of the Western Ghats.Made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, the Ghats have become increasingly vulnerable to serious ecological damage, threatening the sustenance of their people. The 2018 floods were a wake-up call for the region spanning 1600 kilometres and six states-Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Guj...

Your success in this world is proportional to your ability to manage the world and get what you need while building sustainable relationships. Communication in its various forms is the technology that allows you to do this. This is a handbook or a dictionary of communication related situations and how we would solve them. This is a simple and directly applicable toolkit for a communication-related situation you might have Tuesday morning for a presentation, or Friday evening on a date. Wha...

There's nothing quite like the incredible relationship between a human and a dog. From the moment we lay eyes on an adorable puppy or a wonderful adult dog who becomes part of our life journey, we share innumerable moments of pure joy with our furry best friends.With forty-five original pieces by some of India's leading writers, outstanding new voices and individuals who have dedicated their lives to animal welfare, The Book of Dog is a testament to how deeply dogs touch u...

'One evening, when I was headed for dinner with my British girlfriend Ellen, news of her presence spread like wildfire through the entire squad on tour. A senior national selector, who was on tour with us, spotted us walking in the lobby with our hands linked. It didn't even occur to me that I should let go of her hand, because to me that was no crime. There was a good chance that if I had performed consistently on that Australia tour, I would have made it to the senior Indian side, but my...