How does one begin to review a set of books of cartoons and sketches by Mario Miranda? Does it suffice to say that he is one of the best Indian cartoonists who ever lived or that his sketches render much more than what a simple photograph could? It definitely is not enough.

We are midway into March and the mercury is already showing uncomfortable upward trends. With summer almost on us, it becomes imperative that we eat right.

These days we are always looking for exotic ways to present desi dishes.

History tells us that Genghis Khan was the most bloody-minded conqueror that ever lived; Hitler doesn’t even come close. Environmentalists tell us that no one person has ever achieved what Genghis did for bringing down the emission of greenhouse gases on the planet. By killing or causing the deaths of around 30 million people, the great Khan ensured that country-sized tracts of cultivated land became jungles within a generation, thus countering global warming (however negligible it might have been a millennium ago).

In nuclear families where the parents do most of the cooking, children are often fascinated with the going-ons in the kitchen and it’s a great family activity to rope in the kids in the cooking proces

Our grandmothers and mothers were onto something when they kept telling us to eat our fruits.

February to mid March is usually a time of frantic activity among the Hindu communities in India as the period is usually packed with marriages. The fact that no marriages are allowed in Chaitra, the next month in the Hindu calendar, adds to the sense of urgency.

In most parts of India spring is something that we read about in textbooks and hardly encounter in real life as winter seamlessly moves into summer with hardly a gap in between. The season, however, is evident in the markets as season-specific vegetables like asparagus, beet and rocket leaves make their entry at this time. Though

It seems that the Goa police is worried that the upcoming Rohan Sippy film, Dum Maro Dum, which portrays Goa’s criminal underbelly, might be too close to the truth.

Whenever someone talks of Mughlai food, images of biryani, chunks of meat floating in rich gravy and kebabs form in our minds. This begs the question, didn’t the badshahs and nawabs ever eat vegetarian food? Maybe they didn’t, but at least someone in the royal households must have got bored of all the meats and creamy gravies once in a while and asked the bawarchi to make a simple veggie dish. Too true. A large part of Mughlai cuisine