-Aritra Biswas According to Hindu philosophy the Shivling (Shiva Linga) is one of the oldest and most sacred symbols where Lord Shiva, the supreme power of destruction, transformation and regeneration resides. Even further than a mere physical object, the Shivling represents the all-embracing cosmic energy that is the source of creation, and into which it […]Read More
-Prachurya Ghosh The World That Never Imagined Her Razia Sultan was born around 1205 CE into a political system that had no conceptual space for her future. The Delhi Sultanate was still in its infancy, barely three decades old, and already marked by instability, violence, and elite rivalry. Unlike ancient Indian monarchies rooted in myth […]Read More
-Aritra Biswas Introduction: A Palace Made of Purpose Umaid Bhavan Palace on high of Chittar Hill in Jodhpur, is one of the last grand royal palaces in India. This palace developed unlike most of the historic forts and palaces, which were constructed in defense or lavish display, and had a different motive which was to […]Read More
~Debashri Mandal In late 1898, British engineer William Claxton Peppé was overseeing estate work in Piprahwa (present-day Siddharthnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, near the India-Nepal border) when his team accidentally uncovered a buried stupa. Excavating the mound revealed a soapstone reliquary urn inscribed in ancient Brahmi script—a message interpreted as confirming that the buried bones and […]Read More
-Prachurya Ghosh Queen Nefertiti stands as one of the most fascinating and mysterious women of the ancient world. More than three thousand years after her lifetime, her face is known across the globe, yet the details of her life remain partly hidden behind time, politics, and deliberate erasure. Unlike many queens who lived quietly behind […]Read More
-Prachurya Ghosh Fort William stands today on the eastern edge of Kolkata looking calm almost gentle beside the wide flow of the Hooghly but this calm is deceptive because this ground was once one of the most violently contested pieces of land in South Asia. Before its stone walls rose before cannons and barracks this […]Read More
-Oishee Bose The sport of badminton is not a result of a single invention but the product of countless ordinary decisions made in different places. The game can be read as a social object: shaped by craft, by how people fixed broken gear, by local shops that stocked cheap frames, and by committees that argued […]Read More
-Debashri Mandal What is Pheran? The pheran is a long, loose woolen gown with wide sleeves, a type of cloth traditionally worn by both men and women in Kashmir. It generally reaches the knees or ankles and is layered to trap warmth in the valley’s harsh winter. More than a mere clothing, the pheran has […]Read More
-Prachurya Ghosh For most of its life, archaeology has been an art of looking. We examine walls and ask how high they once stood, we study tools and ask how they were held, we read bones to guess what kind of life wore them down. Yet for centuries a far simpler question went unasked, so […]Read More
-Oishee Bose What made people spend time braiding, oiling, winding, braiding again, knotting and adorning hair across centuries until whole guilds of specialists existed to do it for them? Hair reveals much about one’s age, lineage and care and unlike clothing, it cannot be changed by a single purchase. In South Asia, hair became a […]Read More