English

When I boarded a Sri Lankan Airlines flight to Colombo from Trichy in February 2003, I had little idea about the food that awaited me. I presumed that the islanders would have a diet similar to that eaten in Tamil Nadu. Not having been educated by the Internet as one is today, there was very little someone living in Mumbai could have known about the island besides its cricketing prowess and charming accents, made popular by players and cricket commentators alike; there was, of course, the civil war. As we drove from the Bandaranaike International... —Ajay Kamalakaran

I live in Powai, a Mumbai precinct which of late has become a hotspot for the city’s eaters-out. It’s dotted with restaurants – over fifty of them – and they all lie within five-odd kilometres from where I live. A large fleet of cuisines is represented, among them far Eastern, South Asian, ‘continental,’ North and South American. And then there are the places that, via the likes of Zomato, send food home, with the upshot that when my wife’s or ... —Rohit Manchanda

But it stays in your tongue Long after the last meal, lingering Your insides like a passion. He shows his number, and as you move on There are more like him... —Amlanjyoti Goswami

But last year, after coming to the US, I sent her a pack of Earl Grey tea, packaged In a shiny tin box, hand-picked and well-dried,.. — Pujarinee Mitra

In most Janamsakhis, Mardana is depicted as perpetually hungry. But his hunger is symbolic. It’s the hunger for the ultimate truth. Without it, he wouldn’t have walked with Baba Nanak. By showing Mardana as hungry.... — Sarabjeet Garcha

Bangla literature has quite a few Dada figures: Saradindu Banerjee created Baroda, Satyajit Ray Feluda, Narayan Ganguly Tenida and Premendra Mitra created Ghanada. A middle-aged man with a big heart, always available at home, always ready to spin an anecdote – that is Ghanada or Ghanashyam Das, now an extinct species. Ghanada lives in a hostel where his followers gladly pay his monthly rent; they also pay for his voracious appetite. He spends the entire day indulging in gossip, goes to a park in the evening,... — Dr. Rudrajit Paul

It’s not as if I didn’t know what an oat was. Of course I did; in all the (mostly British) literature I read in my younger years, there were numerous instances of horses being fed oats. Occasionally, there was mention of some piss-poor peasant family eating oatmeal. Oats sounded, frankly, utterly unexciting. Black pudding and haggis, spotted dick and summer pudding—some in varying degrees of grossness, some relatively exotic—at least sounded interesting. I am adventurous when it comes to food, so trying these... — Madhulika Liddle

When I came home from school that day, I threw my books all over the floor. No one looked back at me. With her head bent down, Amma was cutting vegetables with a billhook. My older brothers were nowhere in sight. My older sister was muttering something with her music notebook open. My younger sister toddled across the room towards me without wiping her mouth, stuck her hand into my mouth, and then moved away. I made my... — Appadurai Muttulingam

My mother was born in a family of eight children in a small village close to Shikohabad, a few kilometres away from the town of Firozabad, famous for glass work especially bangles. Out of the five daughters and three sons, she stood at number six. The first ever time she travelled ... — Babli Yadav